Number 285: Ranier Maria Rilke "Moving Forward"

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)

Hap Notes: I don't know that Rilke is specifically writing about aging in this poem, although he is certainly talking about the maturation and inspiration of perception. Rilke's poetry is so moving because of his economy of thought; he gives us a few word pictures, a few clues, and then lets us float around in the words and find our own startling revelations.

There are many profound sides to this poem. Let me select my favorite: " I feel closer to what language can't reach." The historian Heinrich Zimmer said "The best truths cannot be spoken and the second best will be misunderstood." (To which Joseph Campbell added "The third best is the usual conversation.") It's a staggering and awe-filled observation that language cannot reach many of the most important things we think and feel.

Here's a little more fuel for your thinking fires as they smolder. Rilke said in the last (tenth) of the "Duino Elegies"– "And we, who have always thought/ of happiness as rising, would feel/ the emotion that almost overwhelms us / whenever a happy thing falls."

Here's a bit more: Rilke writes, "we are incessantly flowing over and over to those who preceded us and to those who apparently come after us … Transience everywhere plunges into a deep being."

Here is where we have talked about Rilke before: http://happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/number-275-ranier-maria-rilke-autumn.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-194-rainer-maria-rilke-archaic.html

Today's masthead features several of Cy Twombly's panels from “Untitled (A Painting in Nine Parts)." On the panel labeled Part 1 are Rilke's words from todays poem. I think the other two panels pictured (V and VI) are a perfect illustration of the poem (for me anyway, but all the panels are exquisite in their speechless perfection of feeling.) If you've a hankering to see the works of "second wave" abstract expressionist Twombly, you owe yourself a trip to Houston, Texas, to the Menil Collection Cy Twombly Gallery where his artwork gets the proper light and setting to astound. You can see the gallery and some of the works here: http://www.menil.org/collection/CyTwomblyInDepth.php (Twombly passed away in July of this year- there will never be another like him.)

Number 284: Dale Wimbrow "The Guy In The Glass"

The Guy In the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.

-- Dale Wimbrow

Hap Notes: First off, never heard of "pelf"? It's a word for ill-gotten gains, money gotten in a disreputable way. This poem, for many years, was attributed to the ubiquitous "Anonymous", that fella who wrote so many of the older familiar poems. Sometimes an urban mythology goes with it such as "it was found on a jail cell wall" or "it was written by a recovering addict." All interesting embroideries but false and belies the work of the poet,Dale Wimbrow (1895-1954), who was a fascinating and multi-faceted poet, musician, writer and artist.

Wimbrow was born in Whaleyville, Maryland. He went to Western Maryland College and served in WWI. He wrote songs and was somewhat famous for his work with orchestras on the radio. Here is a Wimbrow penned song: Dale Wimbrow and his Rubenville Turners doing "Country Bred and Chicken Fed" from 1926: http://www.archive.org/details/edba-5276 Pretty cheery stuff and anticipates the rise of Swing and Western Swing music. He his wife, Dorothy, was a radio writer and producer.

Wimbrow wrote a good half dozen songs in addition to two books. He also started the Indian River News in 1948. The newspaper went on until his death and was later re-established and carried on by his wife.

Today's poem has been memorized, cut out of various newspapers (Ann Landers ran it in her column in 1983) and recited by millions over the years. It was originally published in the American magazine in 1934. Wimbrow wrote it in answer to a question written in to the magazine by an 18 year old fella, " One good reason, please, why an ambitious man should be honest." The magazine offered a prize for the best reader responses. Ironically, I don't think he won that contest. Go fig.

Since this poem has run in countless publications, I doubt that it needs much explication, however, it bears repeating that when you look in the mirror you should be looking a person whom you enjoy being with since that is who you will be with for life.

Here is another of Wimbrow's poems and his children's tribute website for him: http://www.theguyintheglass.com/

Yay! Saturday! So here are some cartoons and music:

Romper Room magic mirror WQAD-TV in Moline, IL.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuU2HcI1SgM&feature=related

And here's Miss Frances at Ding Dong School making a very, uh, interesting sandwich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK5xsXa9LMw

Michael Jackson with "Man In The Mirror": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivWY9wn5ps

That scary mirror scene and transformation of the evil queen in Disney's "Snow White" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N14Ho-VVPgA

Here is a cartoon of Toopy and Binoo with a mirror. The cartoon originated from the books "Toupie et Binou" written by Dominique Jolin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlXQB2V9sU Toopy and Binoo

Here's Arcade Fire with "Black Mirror" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuymDSGCko

This is just sick- bathroom mirrors with commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5n53Qi3Avk

Apropos of nothing– have you ever seen this hand art before?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj1lDZcy_Bc&feature=related

And for the upcoming holiday- here are a few pumpkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAfFoBotSM&feature=related

This is certainly not for children – claymation of part of Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqi5F5MqqTQ

And finally- you've got to really click around the Boobah Zone (I can't believe it's taken me this long to share this- it's so odd, part of a children's show btw): http://www.boohbah.tv/zone.html

(The masthead picture today is the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles)

Number 283: Dylan Thomas "Poem in October"

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

-- Dylan Thomas

Hap Notes: Thomas' birthday is Oct. 27 but I've got a bunch of spooky poems planned for the end of the month so we'll put it here. This is Thomas' lyric reverie as he walks in the early morning on his thirtieth birthday. The landscape fills him with remembrance as well as the joys and sorrows of living.

His word pictures are extraordinary. The "heron priested shore"– who cannot imagine standing herons as priests with their stiff posture and plumage? Then there is a "springful of larks" and the "parables of sunlight" and the birds "flying my name" and the town covered with the red leaves of "October blood." And so much more...

It is both usual and important to scan one's life on her/his birthday. Thomas comes away with the hope that his heart's truth– the truths of his childhood, the truth of nature, his longing for love and understanding, his joys and sorrows– will still be as fresh and remembered on his next birthday.

Thomas' sterling reputation for reading poetry aloud is well-deserved. Here is Thomas reading the poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnoHCSU5yn8&feature=related

Here's where we've talked about Thomas before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-108-dylan-thomas-do-not-go.html

Number 282: Lucy Maud Montgomery "An Autumn Evening'

An Autumn Evening

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

-- Lucy Maud Montgomery

Hap Notes: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) is well known as the author of the Anne of Green Gables books. If you have not read these delightful books or if you'd care to revisit them you can find the full collection here: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a36. If you love these books you are in good company; Mark Twain adored "Anne."

If you have read her work then it will not be surprising to find that Montgomery had a difficult childhood. She was born in Canada, in Cilfton on Prince Edward Island. Her mother died when she was about a year and a half old and her father, distraught with grief and confusion, and left the young Montgomery to live with her mother's parents. Then, when she was 7 years old she lived with her paternal grandparents. then her dad remarried- the marriage was rocky.

Montgomery was a bright and imaginative little girl. After public school she got through a two year college course of study in one year and qualified to teach. She didn't care much for teaching but it did allow her time to write, which is always what she wanted to do. She was pretty and had a lot of suitors but she really just wanted to write. She went through several engagements with suitors which she eventually broke off. However, she knew, at the time, that a woman in Canada had to have a husband. So she eventually did marry in her thirties, three years after publishing the first "Anne" book in 1908.

Married life did not appeal to the writer much. Her husband, Ewan MacDonald, a Presbyterian minister, was subject to depression as was she. Her only outlet from dreariness was writing and she was prolific, publishing books and short stories and poetry. She was quite famous but this seemed to only vaguely touch her life.

I do not think it would be unfair to say that Montgomery enjoyed her youth on Prince Edward Island where she had wonderful daydreams, made up stories and enjoyed the natural beauty of the place. Throughout her whole life her childhood called to her to come back and enjoy the woods and the stories just waiting to be made up.

In today's poem we see flashes of her whole life; a certain lonely melancholy, the "elfin voices" of imagination and childhood, an awe of the beauty of nature and the fulfillment of her soul through this beauty. She stands alone in this poem- as she did always in her own heart as she wrote.

She received many honors in her lifetime including Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts in 1923, and a Companion of the Order of the British Empire, and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France, in 1935.

You can find more Montgomery's poems here: rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/229.html

Number 281: Song Of The Battery Hen

Song of the Battery Hen

We can't grumble about accommodation;
We have a new concrete floor that's
Always dry, four walls that are
Painted white, and a sheet-iron roof
The rain drums on. A fan blows warm air
Beneath our feet to disperse the smell
Of chickenshit and, on dull days,
Fluorescent lighting sees us.

You can tell me; if you come by
The North door, I am in the twelfth pen
On the left-hand side of the third row
From the floor; and in that pen
I am usually the middle one of the three.
But even without directions, you'd
Discover me. I have the same orange-
Red comb, yellow beak and auburn
Feathers, but as the door opens and you
Hear above the electric fan a kind of
One-word wail, I am the one
Who sounds loudest in my head.

Listen. Outside this house there's an
Orchard with small moss-green apple
Trees; beyond that, two fields of
Cabbages then, on the far side of
The road, a broiler house. Listen:
One cockerel crows out of there, as
Tall and proud as the first hour of the sun.
Sometimes I stop calling with the others
To listen, and I wonder if he hears me.
The next time you come here, look for me.
Notice the way I sound inside my head.
God made us all quite differently,
And blessed us with this expensive home.

-- Edwin Brock

Hap Notes: Edwin Brock (1927-1997) idly read a poetry anthology when he was waiting to be demobbed (demobilized) from the Royal Navy in 1946 in Hong Kong after WWII. It changed the young man's life. The idea that verse, with it's often terse and condensed words, had communicative possibilities far beyond any other form of the written word inspired him to write. (He was from a distinctly un-literary South London family and he'd only gotten school qualifications from grammar school.)

He pursued writing as he worked as a policeman. When he was first published in the Times Literary Supplement the editor, Alan Pryce-Jones, had no idea that the young poet was a Bobby. Much was made of this in the British press, but Brock was unaffected by the ballyhoo and continued to read and hone his craft. He eventually became an advertising copywriter. He was quite good at it although he hated it as he hated anything that interfered with his reading and writing.

Brock had more than a dozen books of poetry published in his life time as well as a novel and an autobiography. His divorce, his remarriage, the birth of his children and other aspects of his life were all covered in his somewhat "Confessional" poetry. Today's poem, along with "Five Ways To Kill A Man" are two of his most famous and oft-read poems.

I suppose, one could make a case for the poor chickens in this poem. You'd have to be a complete numb skull not to know about the treatment of chickens raised for meat in today's market. Here in America, their beaks are often cut so that they won't hurt themselves or other chickens while penned up. So that's the first layer here. A battery is a large group of cages for the raising of poultry.

But there's something haunting in this poem that has to do with more than just the plight of animals we raise for food. There's an element in this poem that speaks directly to all of us who feel penned in and, even more startling, the rationalization we go through to defend our positions. That world out there is different, beautiful, calls to us but it is dangerous.

Here's what Brock had to say about today's poem at a reading: "It was written... when I was staying on a farm in Worcestershire. The farmer showed me his battery house with some pride and when I made the usual cliched comment about the poor bloody hens he said "Do you know we had an experiment one day, we left the flaps of all the cages up to see what the hens would do. Well, they looked around and walked right back in." At that point I said to myself, " Christ, he's just written my autobiography" and that afternoon I wrote "Song of the Battery Hen."

You can find more Brock here:www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7496

Number 280: William Allingham "The Fairies"

The Fairies

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music,
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen,
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow;
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite?
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

-- William Allingham

Hap Notes: William Allingham (1824-1889) was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland and worked at posts in custom houses as he wrote poetry. (Hap, what the hell is a customs house? Well, usually the term refers to an office for government officials that process the paperwork for the importation and exportation of goods.) He wrote poetry throughout his life. Today's poem is much quoted from the Willy Wonka movie to books by Terry Pratchett.

Allingham may be most famous for his copious diaries and records of his friend Alfred Tennyson. He is often referred to as the Boswell to Tennsyson's Dr. Johnson. He is much more than that, though. William Butler Yeats referred to him as a "minor immortal" and told Allingham's wife that he was "sometimes inclined to believe that [Allingham] was my own master in Irish Verse, starting me in the way I have gone whether for good or for ill." He was also friends with Carlyle who influenced him to take an editorship with Fraser's Magazine.

Both Yeats and Allingham believed in fairies, by the way.

Allingham also wrote under the names D. Pollex and Patricius Walker. In his book of poetic thoughts, Blackberries, written as D. Pollex, he writes "England! Leave Asia, Africa alone/ And mind this little country of thine own."

In today's poem, by the way, the places Columbkill, Slievleleague and Rosses are all places in Northern Ireland. Columbkill is a particularly interesting saint, also, by the by. Allingham's reputation suffers because he has that glib touch of the Irish blarney. His verses are so smooth that they are often considered too easy or trite. Today's poem is so well known that it makes this judgment impossible, really. His verses are easily read and charming. You could do worse.

Allingham's last words were "I am seeing things you know nothing of" and were oft repeated by Tennyson in his aging years.

In one of Allingham's diary entries about Tennyson he relates how an innkeeper had kept a poem of Tennyson's that the poet had written on a piece of butcher paper and had left in his room. The poem, Allingham is stunned to find out upon seeing a copy of it, was Tennyson's "In Memoriam" his famous requiem on the death of his friend and the poem was a favorite of Queen Victoria.

Here's a little bonus poem of Allingham's:

Let Me Sing of What I know

A wild west Coast, a little Town,
Where little Folk go up and down,
Tides flow and winds blow:
Night and Tempest and the Sea,
Human Will and Human Fate:
What is little, what is great?
Howsoe'er the answer be,
Let me sing of what I know.

You can find more Allingham here: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/a#a6965

It's Saturday so here are our cartoons:

But first, Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt. I always think of this melody when I read Allingham's poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRpzxKsSEZg&feature=related

Some fairies and fairy art: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2kFMkhm0Y4&feature=related

Here's a charming leader for a documentary on Faeries: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZURERtex38&feature=related

Gotta have the Fantasia fairies in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, I s'pose: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8At8zfh_o3E&feature=related

If you can stand another rendition- here's someone playing the Glass Armonica (invented by Benjamin Franklin) with ""Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies": www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ--g&feature=related

This is so odd I had to share it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIBZEJe6sv0

Fairytales toys: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxnBzLXq1dM&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL7EDFDA9128DECD2C

And the Star Fairies toys: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoVPUVb1oxs

Okay, enough with the fairies. Here's the palate cleansing Pixies with the only song of theirs I can even remotely stand, "This Monkey's Gone To Heaven": www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R_-3w_Iwk0&feature=related I suppose I could have used Black Sabbath's "Fairies Wear Boots" with our theme, too. More yuk.

I'm indulging myself now with some music to clear my head of the crappy music and sugary fairies toys. Love that Hubert Sumlin guitar, too. This is my idea of magical beings. Howlin' Wolf with "Smokestack Lightning": www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAwjZLztd28 I feel better now.

Number 279: John Masefield "Sea Fever"

Sea Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

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

Hap Notes: First off, when I was a kid I memorized this poem as "I must GO down to the seas again...." but this is wrong. The full verses above are exactly as printed in the book where the poem first appeared in 1916, Salt Water Poems and Ballads. You can see the book for yourself (with its charming illustrations) here: openlibrary.org/books/OL6591137M/Salt-water_poems_and_ballads and it's well worth a look.

Today's poem has moved many a heart with it's description of the sea-faring life. There's more here, though. The "wild call" that is all of nature may even be a call to do something that will bring on loneliness or danger but cannot be denied – like an artist or a writer or a composer or even a policeman, fireman, farmer. There's the feeling of the individual facing life and enjoying its dangers and beauties in this poem, which is why, I believe, it is so successful. It sums up what we all feel about life whether we are sailors or not – that feeling of being one with some part of nature, being invigorated by the challenges ahead. The prospect of a new journey. The hard work and fellowship with other travelers. The sweet rest afterward. It is a metaphor for life, too, yes?

John Masefield (1878-1967) was brought up by an aunt who urged him to go to sea to "break his addiction to reading." His mother died when he was six years old and his father died not long after that. ( I don't know that it's necessary to say it, but I will anyway: poets are most often sprung out of family anomalies and tragedies–from Tennyson's wacky dad to Rilke's mom dressing him as girl when he was little to Kunitz's dad drinking acid to Corso being sent to orphanages and told his mom was dead when she wasn't – the list goes on and on. Just sayin'.) Masefield wrote his thoughts in a journal and always had, as my parents used to say of me, "his nose in a book." (This is an interesting statement really. I suppose when you are not the one reading but just observing a reader it does look like you are just staring at something intently. The reader is miles away – on a ship, in the past, in the future, riding a horse, seeing battles, falling in love – but especially to those who read little, it looks like staring at a page.)

Masefield was 17 on his first ocean voyage as a hand on a ship bound for Chile. He saw wonders (a nocturnal rainbow, flying fish etc.), got seasick and ended up in New York where he had a variety of jobs including being a bartender and working in a carpet factory. Masefield was still an avid reader, spending most of his meager cash on books. He read a poem by Duncan Campbell Scott, "The Piper of Arll" which set him towards poetry. He even wrote Scott a letter telling him that he was the one who had inspired Masefield to write it.

After returning to England he met the woman who would be his wife and life-long partner, Constance Crommelin. She was 35, he was 23. She was a mathematics teacher who was a lover of English literature. He wrote copious amounts of love letters to her. They were together until her death in 1960.

Masefield was a busy writer. He wrote book reviews by the score, plays, children's books, poetry and made a pretty good living doing it. He was also a lecturer and was thought to be an expert on English Literature, most particularly Chaucer, due to his "reading addiction." After the death of Robert Bridges, Masefield was appointed England's Poet Laureate as his successor. He was England's laureate from 1930 until his death in 1963 (only Tennyson lasted longer at the post.) There was some little controversy over this as some had assumed Kipling would be appointed. Masefield, throughout his writing career, even when he was laureate, always included a self-addressed stamped envelope with every submission of work he made so that if it was rejected it could be sent back to him (this is common practice for writers but not common for the laureate- very humble of him.)

Here's one of his final verses, found after his death:

Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns:

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there’s an end of me.

You can find more Masefield here: www.poetry-archive.com/m/masefield_john.html