John Masefield must have known Shakespeare very well; he must have been familiar with both King Lear and Macbeth and some of the imagery in this sonnet is resonant of those plays. The mad wildness of nature, and the terrors of the natural environment are evident in this sonnet, even though once again he mentions the still beauty of the rose:
Out of the clouds come torrents, from the earth
Fire and quakings, from the shrieking air
Tempests that harry half the planet’s girth.
Death’s unseen seeds are scattered everywhere.
Yet in his iron cage the mind of man
Measures and braves the terrors of all these,
The blindest fury and the subtlest plan
He turns, or tames, or shows in their degrees.
Yet it himself are forces of like power,
Untamed, unreckoned; seeds that brain to brain
Pass across oceans bringing thought to flower,
New worlds, new selves, where he can live again,
Eternal beauty’s everlasting rose
Which casts this world as shadow as it goes.
Lois Elsden 