John Masefield Life Quotations

On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street, The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet, With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea And-the great movement changes-the pageant passes me.

Love is a flame to burn out human wills, Love is a flame to set the will on fire, Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.

All ye that pass by! While we least think it he prepares his Mate. Mate, and the King's pawn played, it never ceases, Though all the earth is dust of taken pieces.

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.

Man cannot call the brimming instant back; Time's an affair of instants spun to days; If man must make an instant gold, or black, Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways. Life may be duller for an instant's blaze. Life's an affair of instants spun to years, Instants are only cause of all these tears.

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

Life is a long headache in a noisy street.

To most of us the future seems unsure. But then it always has been; and we who have seen great changes must have great hopes.