As I have observed before (see week 41), in the latter part of the last century the once acclaimed John Masefield became about as unfashionable a poet as it is possible to be, finishing his days as Poet Laureate, in which role he penned the usual dutiful piffle. But if you want a straight tale in verse told without literary sophistication yet still with considerable literary skill, Masefield remains your man, and the long poem ‘Dauber’, from which this week’s extract is taken, is one of his most accomplished. It tells the story of a young man with a burning ambition to be a painter, who takes service aboard a clipper partly for economic reasons and partly because he wants to learn how to paint the sea properly, ‘by one who really knows’.

There he finds himself adrift in a society that sets no store by his artistic talents and offers no reward for them. (Well, we’ve all been there. When my children were small I put them each on a pocket-money bonus of a 5% share in my annual royalties; this gave them, if nothing else, some useful practice in the arithmetic of the infinitesimal). Though woefully ill-fitted for the hard nautical life, Dauber does his best to do what is required of him, and eventually earns some grudging respect, only to fall to his death in a race to the riggings to adjust the sails in a storm. His last words are a defiant ‘It will go on’, referring to his faith both that beauty will endure and that there will always be those who wish to capture it.

The following stanzas capture vividly his fall from height.

From ‘Dauber’

There came a gust, the sail leaped from his hands,

So that he saw it high above him, grey,
And there his mate was falling; quick he clutched
An arm in oilskins swiftly snatched away.
A voice said ‘Christ!’ a quick shape stooped and touched.
Chain struck his hands, ropes shot, the sky was smutched
With vast black fires that ran, that fell, that furled,
And then he saw the mast, the small snow hurled,

The fore-topgallant yard far, far aloft,
And blankness settling on him and great pain;
And snow beneath his fingers wet and soft
And topsail-sheet-blocks shaking at the chain.
He knew it was he who had fallen; then his brain
Swirled in a circle while he watched the sky.
Infinite multitudes of snow blew by.

‘I thought it was Tom who fell,’ his brain’s voice said.
‘Down on the bloody deck!’ the Captain screamed.
The multitudinous little snow-flakes sped.
His pain was real enough, but all else seemed.
Si with a bucket ran, the water gleamed
Tilting upon him; others came, the Mate …
They knelt with eager eyes like things that wait

For other things to come. He saw them there.
‘It will go on,’ he murmured, watching Si.
Colours and sounds seemed mixing in the air,
The pain was stunning him, and the wind went by.
‘More water,’ said the Mate. ‘Here, Bosun, try.
Ask if he’s got a message. Hell, he’s gone!
Here, Dauber, paints.’ He said, ‘It will go on.’

Not knowing his meaning rightly, but he spoke
With the intenseness of a fading soul
Whose share of Nature’s fire turns to smoke,
Whose hand on Nature’s wheel loses control.
The eager faces glowered red like coal.
They glowed, the great storm glowed, the sails, the mast.
‘It will go on,’ he cried aloud, and passed.

John Masefield