Masefield's Working-Class Credentials

John Masefield (1878-1967) wasn't slumming when he wrote about sailors and laborers—he was one. Orphaned at six, he was sent to sea at fifteen as a merchant marine apprentice. He deserted ship in New York at seventeen, worked in a carpet factory, lived in a Bowery flophouse, and spent years doing manual labor before becoming a poet. This poem, published in 1902 when he was 24, is his declaration of independence from Victorian poetry's drawing-room subjects.

The timing matters. British poetry in 1902 still largely celebrated empire, nobility, and classical subjects. Kipling had written about common soldiers, but often from a patriotic, imperial angle. Masefield goes further—his subjects aren't brave servants of empire but victims of it: "the men hemmed in with the spears," the anonymous dead of colonial wars, workers "pricked on with the goad" like beasts of burden.

Notice the poem's structure: eight stanzas of rejection ("Not of the princes...") followed by acceptance ("Mine be...") and a liturgical seal ("Amen"). This isn't a political essay—it's a consecration, a religious dedication of his art to the poor. The word choice is deliberate: priests consecrate bread, Masefield consecrates his poetry to "the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth."

The Catalog of the Invisible

Masefield builds his poem through catalogs—lists of specific workers and their specific labors. This is a classical technique (Homer catalogs ships, Whitman catalogs Americans), but Masefield catalogs the people other poets ignored. Notice the precision: not just "sailors" but "the stoker of steamers" (the men shoveling coal in the engine room), "the drowsy man at the wheel," "the tired lookout." These aren't romantic sea-dogs—they're exhausted workers on night watch.

The military images span from ancient to modern: "men hemmed in with spears" (ancient warfare), "the tattered battalion" (Napoleonic-era formations), "the lads who carried the koppie" (Boer War, 1899-1902). Masefield isn't writing about one war but about all wars, seen from below. The "be-medalled Commander" gets parades; the actual fighters get "broken heads and the blood running into their eyes."

Watch how the poem accelerates through repetition and rhythm. The anaphora ("Not of... Not the... Not the...") hammers like a work song, building to the turn at "Mine be." The alliteration—"dust," "dross," "dirt," "mould," "maimed," "halt"—creates a harsh, grinding sound that matches the harsh, grinding lives he's describing. This isn't pretty poetry about ugly subjects; it's poetry that sounds like the labor it describes.

John Masefield

A Consecration

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers

Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years,—

Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears;

The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,

Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,

The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.

Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne,

Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,

Boer War reference

A **koppie** is an Afrikaans word for a small hill—Masefield references the Second Boer War (1899-1902), where British soldiers fought for these strategic high points. The anonymous "lads who carried the koppie" died in imperial wars without recognition.

But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known.

Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,

The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,

The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,

The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,

Chantyman's work

A **chantyman** led work songs (sea shanties) while sailors pulled **halliards** (ropes for raising sails). Masefield, who went to sea at 15, knew this labor firsthand—the rhythm of the poem mirrors the rhythm of hauling rope.

The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout.

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;—

Mine he the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!

Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;

Mine he a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.

Biblical echo

"The halt and the blind" comes from Luke 14:21, where the poor and disabled are invited to the feast the rich rejected. Masefield reverses typical poetic subject matter by choosing society's outcasts as his guests of honor.

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

Amen.

Consecration as vow

The **Amen** transforms this from manifesto into prayer. Masefield isn't just declaring his subject—he's taking a religious vow to write for the powerless, making poetry itself a sacred act.