I am a great admirer of John Masefield’s poetry and his sonnets in particular, but some of them are not as easy as others to access… and the one I’m sharing here is one of those. At first read it seems straightforward, but the more I have looked at it, the more I find in it and more different layers of meaning.
Here it is without any more comment from me:
You are more beautiful than women are,
Wiser than men, stronger than ribbéd death,
Juster than Time, more constant than the star,
Dearer than love, more intimate than breath;
Having all art, all science, all control
Over the still unsmithied, even as Time
Cradles the generations of man’s soul,
You are the light to guide, the way to climb.
So, having followed beauty, having bowed
To wisdom and to death, to law, to power,
I like a blind man stumble from the crowd
Into the darkness of a deeper hour,
Where in the lonely silence I may wait
The prayed-for gleam–your hand upon the gate.
Lois Elsden 