John Masefield

Fragments (Masefield)

Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
The rabbits and the pismires brood

Troy as archaeological fact

Troy was a real city, excavated in the 1870s-80s. Masefield treats the legendary city as if examining actual ruins—'shards' and 'broken gold' are literal archaeological terms, not metaphors.

On broken gold, and shards, and beads
Where Priam's ancient palace stood.
The floors of many a gallant house
Are matted with the roots of grass;
The glow-worm and the nimble mouse
Among her ruins flit and pass.
And there, in orts of blackened bone,
The widowed Trojan beauties lie,
And Simois babbles over stone

Simois—the river, not just decoration

The Simois is the actual river that ran through Troy. Using the real river name grounds the fantasy in geography; it's not generic mythological scenery.

And waps and gurgles to the sky.
Once there were merry days in Troy,
Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,
The passing chariots did annoy
The sunning housewives at their wheels.
And many a lovely Trojan maid
Set Trojan lads to lovely things;
The game of life was nobly played,
They played the game like Queens and Kings.
So that, when Troy had greatly passed
In one red roaring fiery coal,
The courts the Grecians overcast
Became a city in the soul.

Shift from Troy to Atlantis

At stanza 6, Masefield abandons Troy entirely and moves to Atlantis—a completely fictional lost city. The poem's real subject isn't history but the *pattern* of lost civilizations.

In some green island of the sea,
Where now the shadowy coral grows
In pride and pomp and empery
The courts of old Atlantis rose.
In many a glittering house of glass
The Atlanteans wandered there;
The paleness of their faces was
Like ivory, so pale they were.
And hushed they were, no noise of words

Silence as power

Atlantis is defined by what it *lacks*—'no noise of words.' This inverts normal descriptions of advanced civilizations. Masefield makes silence the mark of superiority, not noise or activity.

In those bright cities ever rang;
Only their thoughts, like golden birds,
About their chambers thrilled and sang.
They knew all wisdom, for they knew
The souls of those Egyptian Kings
Who learned, in ancient Babilu,
The beauty of immortal things.
They knew all beauty, when they thought
The air chimed like a stricken lyre,

Golden birds—recurring symbol

The 'golden birds' appear three times (stanzas 9, 10, 15). They're not real birds but thoughts made visible—a way to show how Atlantean wisdom becomes active force in the world.

The elemental birds were wrought,
The golden birds became a fire.
And straight to busy camps and marts
The singing flames were swiftly gone;
The trembling leaves of human hearts
Hid boughs for them to perch upon.
And men in desert places, men

Practical effect of beauty

The 'singing flames' inspire broken men to fight and die. Masefield argues that beauty and ideals aren't luxuries—they're what makes people capable of heroism.

Practical effect of beauty

The 'singing flames' inspire broken men to fight and die. Masefield argues that beauty and ideals aren't luxuries—they're what makes people capable of heroism.

Abandoned, broken, sick with fears,
Rose singing, swung their swords agen,
And laughed and died among the spears.
The green and greedy seas have drowned
That city's glittering walls and towers,
Her sunken minarets are crowned
With red and russet water-flowers.
In towers and rooms and golden courts
The shadowy coral lifts her sprays;

Coral replaces marble

Masefield describes Atlantis's ruins using sea life ('coral,' 'water-flowers,' 'shark'). The ocean doesn't destroy the city's meaning—it transforms it into something still alive.

The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts,
The shark doth haunt her hidden ways.

Dream as survival mechanism

The final stanzas argue that lost civilizations survive as *dreams* that inspire creation. 'Immortal things still give us dream'—the cities live on through human art and ambition.

But, at the falling of the tide,
The golden birds still sing and gleam,

Dream as survival mechanism

The final stanzas argue that lost civilizations survive as *dreams* that inspire creation. 'Immortal things still give us dream'—the cities live on through human art and ambition.

The Atlanteans have not died,
Immortal things still give us dream.
The dream that fires man's heart to make,
To build, to do, to sing or say
A beauty Death can never take,
An Adam from the crumbled clay.
''Greenwich.''
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

How Lost Cities Become Ideas

Masefield structures this poem as a deliberate parallel: Troy falls to Greeks, Atlantis sinks beneath the sea. Both are gone. But the poem's argument isn't that they're forgotten—it's that lost civilizations transform into cultural memory that shapes how people act.

Notice the shift at stanza 6. Troy occupies the first five stanzas with concrete, archaeological detail. Then Masefield abandons Troy and moves to Atlantis, a city that never existed. This isn't a mistake or digression. **The poem claims that the *pattern* of lost greatness matters more than historical fact**. Whether Troy was real or Atlantis fictional becomes irrelevant. Both function the same way: as ideals that inspire.

The 'golden birds' are the mechanism. They represent thoughts and beauty made active—they leave Atlantis and 'to busy camps and marts / The singing flames were swiftly gone.' Masefield is saying that abstract ideals (beauty, wisdom, art) literally cause people to rise up and act. Broken men in deserts 'Rose singing, swung their swords agen, / And laughed and died among the spears.' The dream of lost greatness makes heroism possible.

Why the Final Image Matters: 'An Adam from the Crumbled Clay'

[CONTEXT: Masefield wrote this around 1902, during a period of imperial anxiety in Britain. The Boer War had just ended. There was widespread worry about national decline.]

The last stanza reveals what the poem is actually about. 'A beauty Death can never take, / An Adam from the crumbled clay'—Masefield argues that human creation (art, culture, beauty) is the only thing that survives civilizational collapse. Troy crumbles. Atlantis drowns. But the *dream* of what they represented lives on and generates new creation.

'Adam from the crumbled clay' is Genesis language—making something new from dust. Masefield is saying that each generation must create its own beauty from the ruins of what came before. The poem isn't nostalgic. It's about how lost civilizations become fuel for new ones. The 'Atlanteans have not died' not because they literally survive, but because their ideals keep generating new human effort and art. This is why the birds 'still sing'—not in some supernatural sense, but because people keep dreaming the dream and building from it.