A marvellous solitude

John Masefield, who later became a very popular Poet Laureate, grew up in the country in the 1880’s near Ledbury. His early childhood was blighted by the loss of his parents, but from a very early age he was precociously aware of ‘Beauty’ as an abstract and found examples all around him in these early rural times.

Many of us became acquainted with Masefield through the many poems which were in anthologies we read at school, and the wonderful and vivid imagery, and the exciting scenes he painted through his verse. He is less well-known for the sixty sonnets he wrote, a cycle of verse which shows his brilliant mind and command of language – should anyone doubt it! It is interesting how he manipulates language and creates his own words, hintings, broidery, flowth, I’ve not come across these anywhere else.

This sonnet must have been written with thoughts of his childhood in mind, the natural world which fascinated the young boy; little robins, rapturous nightingales, jewel-like kingfishers, deer, shy rabbits,shadowy fish, purple moths, and from lowly worms to eagles (were there any eagles around Herefordshire when he was a boy? I somehow doubt it!)…  this natural menagerie is displayed in these fourteen lines, lines which also leave the reader wondering to whom they are addressed, his love, Love, Beauty, an omniscient being?

The little robin hopping in the wood
Draws friendship from you, the rapt nightingale
Making the night a marvellous solitude,
Only of you to darkness tells the tale.
Kingfishers are but jewels on your dress,
Dun deer that rove and timid rabbits shy
Are but the hintings of your gentleness.
Upon your wings the eagle climbs the sky.
Fish that are shadows in the water pass
With mystery from you, the purpled moth
Dust from your kirtle on his broidery has,
Out of your bounty every beauty flowth
For you are all, all fire, all living form,
Marvel in man and glory in the worm.