vision, with no self-consciousness, with no power to refer or to
interpret. It is sad that so many of those who have marvellous
experiences have nothing else; while those who are sensitive and
imaginative live circumscribed. What does the middle watch mean to an
average seaman? But occasionally the sailor is a Joseph Conrad or a
John Masefield. Then the visions of splendour and the glorious voices
of nature are seen and heard not only by the eye and the ear, but by
the spirit.

Although Chaucer took Mr. Masefield out of the carpet factory even as
Spenser released Keats it would be a mistake to suppose (as many do)
that the Ledbury boy was an uncouth vagabond, who, without reading,
without education, and without training, suddenly became a poet. He
had a good school education before going to sea; and from earliest
childhood he longed to write. Even as a little boy he felt the impulse
to put his dreams on paper; he read everything he could lay his hands
on, and during all the years of bodily toil, afloat and ashore, he had
the mind and the aspiration of a man of letters. Never, I suppose, was
there a greater contrast between an individual's outer and inner life.
He mingled with rough, brutal, decivilized creatures; his ears were
assaulted by obscene language, spoken as to an equal; he saw the
ugliest side of humanity, and the blackest phases of savagery. Yet
through it all, sharing these experiences with no trace of
condescension, his soul was like a lily.

He descended into hell again and again, coming out with his inmost
spirit unblurred and shining, even as the rough diver brings from the
depths the perfect pearl. For every poem that he has written reveals
two things: a knowledge of the harshness of life, with a nature of
extraordinary purity, delicacy, and grace. To find a parallel to this,