Beauty is here

You may have gathered that John Masefield is a favourite poet of mine; Shakespeare to my mind is the master, but Masefield who only died when I was sixteen, speaks to me in a different way.

It strikes me as tragic that so many children these days grow up hating poetry… whether it is the way they are taught or the poets who are chosen for them to study (not enjoy, but study) I don’t know. When I was still teaching, and teaching young people who had a very checkered educational history, poetry was their favourite lessons. I chose poems that I thought they would like, and it was good luck if I liked them as well… the main thing was to engage them!

For some reason I never introduced them to Masefield… I wish I had!

Here is another poem from his sonnet cycle:

I never see the red rose crown the year,
Nor feel the young grass underneath my tread,
Without the thought “This living beauty here
Is earth’s remembrance of a beauty dead.
Surely where all this glory is displayed
Love has been quick, like fire, to high ends,
Here, in this grass, an altar has been made
For some white joy, some sacrifice of friends;
Here, where I stand, some leap of human brains
Has touched immortal things and left its trace,
The earth is happy here, the gleam remains;
Beauty is here, the spirit of the place,
I touch the faith which nothing can destroy,
The earth, the living church of ancient joy.”