A Pier-Head Chorus
John Masefield 1878 (Ledbury) – 1967 (Abingdon)
Oh I'll be chewing salted horse and biting flinty bread,
And dancing with the stars to watch, upon the fo'c's'le head,
Hearkening to the bow-wash and the welter of the tread
Of a thousand tons of clipper running free.
For the tug has got the tow-rope and will take us to the Downs,
Her paddles churn the river-wrack to muddy greens and browns,
And I have given river-wrack and all the filth of towns
For the rolling, combing cresters of the sea.
We'll sheet the mizzen-royals home and shimmer down the Bay,
The sea-line blue with billows, the land-line blurred and grey;
The bow-wash will be piling high and thrashing into spray,
As the hooker's fore-foot tramples down the swell.
She'll log a giddy seventeen and rattle out the reel,
The weight of all the run-out line will be a thing to feel,
As the bacca-quidding shell-back shambles aft to take the wheel,
And the sea-sick little middy strikes the bell.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 10 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AAAB CCCB DDDE FFFE |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 901 |
Words | 164 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"A Pier-Head Chorus" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/55946/a-pier-head-chorus>.
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