Word: masefield
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With the discoveries of these two savants, however, and the opinion of Mr. Masefield that the. Trojan War was fought principally for the strategic reason of obtaining possession of the Dardanelles, the study of at least one of the dead languages may take on a certain flavor of romance which almost always attaches itself to the historical past, but which sometimes refuses to grace what is pure fiction. The legend of Roland, for instance, dying in the Roncesvalles, is far more appealing to the imagination than any wholly man made fairy tale. If one can believe, no matter how faintly...
...Poet Laureate of England recently arrived in Manhattan, refused to be interviewed, refused to express any opinion at all of America, refused to give his address in Manhattan. This, of course, was not playing the game which so many Britishers have overplayed. The Victorian poet, beloved of Masefield, master technician, comes to grace the campus of Ann Arbor as visiting lecturer, patron saint, what you will; a post which was previously occupied by our own poet, Robert Frost. It has 'been rumored that at Oxford, near which he lives, the elderly poet finds time and takes pleasure...
There is much that is similar in the lives of the two royal unfortunates, if we accept Masefield's account. Each was queen in a strange land over an unfriendly people, each in actuality ruler; each was the largest of bitter hatred and disgusting contumely in life; each died a violent death at the hands of rebellious subjects. But there the parallel ends, for Queen Jezebel lacked in life friends or faithful servants, nor were there any to mourn her dead saving her tiring-women. A foreigner among foreigners, civilized among barbarians, of race and religion different from...
...feels that her sorrowing is not for such things as these, but because she has brought misfortune to the king her husband, whom she loved, and to her two sons. Hers is the tragedy of the too beautiful woman; there was no need for Masefield to interweave with hers the story of Helen and of Nireus to teach us that. And yet it was some recompense that men should say of her that she was beautiful and a king's daughter...
...this Masefield writes for us, in the austere numbers of "Samson Agonistes;" he is probably the only latter-day poet that can catch their authentic note. And the songs incorporated in the play show that he has not forgotten how to write lyrics as they should be written. It is a good play, almost a great play. And yet (shamefacedly I confess it) I prefer his earlier, and therefore presumably less mature work. For there is no one can write as he can of the sea, and of them that go down, to the sea in ships...