John Masefield - Life Quotes

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I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

John Masefield
Man cannot call the brimming instant back;
Time's an affair of instants spun to days;
If man must make an instant gold, or black,
Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways.
Life may be duller for an instant's blaze.
Life's an affair of instants spun to years,
Instants are only cause of all these tears.

John Masefield
In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.

John Masefield
On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street,
The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet,
With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea
And-the great movement changes-the pageant passes me.

John Masefield
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

John Masefield
What is this creature, Music, save the Art,
The Rhythm that the planets journey by?
The living Sun-Ray entering the heart,
Touching the Life with that which cannot die?

John Masefield
All the great things of life are swiftly done, Creation, death, and love the double gate. However much we dawdle in the sun We have to hurry at the touch of Fate.

John Masefield
Life's battle is a conquest for the strong; The meaning shows in the defeated thing.

John Masefield
It may be that we cease; we cannot tell.
Even if we cease, life is a miracle.

John Masefield
When Life knocks at the door no one can wait,
When Death makes his arrest we have to go.

John Masefield