And I see in dreams, awhiles, the beach, the sun’s disc dipping red,
And the tall ship, under topsails, swaying in past Nigger Head.
I’d be glad to step ashore there. Glad to take a pick and go
To the lone blazed coco-palm tree in the place no others know,
And lift the gold and silver that has moldered there for years
By the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
Biography. John Masefield (1875-⸺) is an English poet and playwright. When a small boy he had a mania for running away from home; to satisfy this longing his father sent him to sea when he was fourteen years old, in charge of the captain of a sailing vessel. During his travels he collected much material which he afterward used in his poems. On one of his trips he landed in New York City, where he acquired considerable knowledge of American customs. Next to Kipling he is England’s greatest singer of her “Seven Seas and Five Oceans.”
Early in 1916 Masefield came to the United States on a lecture tour which aroused much interest in him and his writings. During the recent World War he served in France in connection with the Red Cross. He also served in the campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula and wrote a splendid account of that unfortunate undertaking.