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Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

John Masefield

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John Masefield
Age: 88 †
Born: 1878
Born: June 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 12
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
County of Herefordshire
John Edward Masefield
Sense
Mixture
Mixtures
Uncommon
Poetry
Common

More quotes by John Masefield

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And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.
John Masefield
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Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
John Masefield
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To most of us the future seems unsure. But then it always has been and we who have seen great changes must have great hopes.
John Masefield
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It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.
John Masefield
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The days that make us happy make us wise
John Masefield
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So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.
John Masefield
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Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.
John Masefield
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Each one could be a Jesus mild, Each one has been a little child, A little child with laughing look, A lovely white unwritten book A book that God will take, my friend, As each goes out at journey's end.
John Masefield
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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
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I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.
John Masefield
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All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.
John Masefield
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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
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Life's battle is a conquest for the strong The meaning shows in the defeated thing.
John Masefield
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I have seen flowers come in stony places And kind things done by men with ugly faces, And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races, So I trust, too.
John Masefield
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When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted, When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored, When the last fire is out and the last guest departed Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord.
John Masefield
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Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.
John Masefield
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God warms his hands at man's heart when he prays.
John Masefield
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State are not made, nor patched they grow Grow slow through centuries of pain, And grow correctly in the main But only grow by certain laws, Of certain bits in certain jaws.
John Masefield
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In the dark room 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
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God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It'll spring up and glow, like--like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways.
John Masefield