ea-mist," are the
qualities of Fiona Macleod's best verse.

John Masefield.--Instead of looking to the land of dreams and the
misty past, like the Celtic writers, Masefield and Gibson, two younger
English poets, have found in the everyday life of the present time the
themes for their verse. Masefield was born in 1875 in Shropshire. He
was a seafarer in his youth, and later, a traveler by land and sea.
These varied experiences contributed color and vividness to his
narrative verse.

[Illustration: JOHN MASEFIELD.]

He has written several long narrative poems on unromantic subjects.
_Dauber_ (1912) contains some of his best lines and its story is the
most poetic. This poem follows the fortunes of a poor youth who,
wishing to be a painter of ships, went to sea to study his mode at
first hand. Masefield describes, with much power, the young artist's
ambition, his rough handling by the uncouth sailors, and his perilous
experiences while rounding Cape Horn. _Dauber_ exhibits the poet's
power of vividly picturing human figures and landscapes. This poem,
like most of Masefield's long narrative poems, is a story of human
failure,--a dull prosaic failure, such as prose fiction presents in
its pessimistic moods.

A strong and cheerful note is struck in some of Masefield's short
lyrics, notably in _Laugh and be Merry_, _Roadways_, _The Seekers_,
and _Being Her Friend_. In _Laugh and be Merry_, the song is almost
triumphant:--

"Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.
* * * * *
Laugh and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord."[5]

Masefield's fancy does not busy itself with dreams and impossible
visions. He paints life in its grayness and sordidness and dull
mediocrity. Sometimes his verse is merely plain rimed prose, but again
it becomes vigorous, picturesque, and vivid in description, as in the
following lines from _Dauber_:--

"...then the snow
Whirled all about, dense, multitudinous cold,
Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek
Which whiffled out men's tears, deafened, took hold,
Flattening the flying drift against the cheek."[6]

Wilfred W. Gibson.--Gibson, who was born in Hexham in 1878, sings of
the struggling oppressed work-a-day people:--

"Crouched in the dripping dark
With steaming shoulders stark
The man who hews the coal to feed the fires."[7]

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