[David Anthony]

I think it's a lovely and, as others say, a memorable poem. Such vivid imagery. I've known it by heart since I was a teenager.
But, however, recognising Spike Milligan's take on this debate:

I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky.
I left my pants and socks there:
I wonder if they're dry.

[Brian Watson]

the white sail’s shaking
a grey dawn breaking
the white clouds flying
the sea gulls crying
the long trick’s over

Though they're iambic of course by demotion, these five line endings have in common three nominally stressed syllables in a row. That's one part of the appealing rhythm, along with the already mentioned double iambs.

[Jayne Osborn]

Haha, you beat me to it, David!

Whenever I hear, or read, Sea Fever I automatically think of Spike Milligan's version.

That said, I'm very fond of Masefield's poem as I, too, learnt it at school. It was one of many that everyone my age (-ish) was exposed to, such as: 'The Daffodils', 'Silver', 'Cargoes', 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Donkey', 'Leisure', 'The Tyger'... all of which I can still recite, in full or in part.

Happy school days! (At least when we did poetry.) Sea Fever is on the long list of memorable poems I've loved for most of my life.

"And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over" was on the front of the service sheet at my mother-in-law's funeral.

Thanks for submitting this one, whoever it was

Jayne

[Bill Carpenter]

We learned this in 5th grade. Masefield was still alive and still poet laureate. I greatly admire his touch with meter here, bringing subtlety and complexity without making you feel he is just diluting his meter with prose. A rollicking submission.

Fairly recently, I picked up a collected Masefield. Sea Fever gives a poor idea of his range, even early on. For sea poems, the long poem Dauber is grand and if there are any vivider poetic depictions of storms at sea, I'd like to know about them. The second part of Reynard the Fox must be one of the best chase sequences in poetry. Thanks, friends!

[Roger Slater]

It seems that many positive responses here stem from a sentimental attachment to the poem, which makes me wonder (without having any way of answering my question) how people here would have responded to the poem today, here and now, if they had never encountered it before and so had no sentimental associations. Would it resonate so as to become a sentimental favorite among many of us? Would we praise it as one of our favorite poems? Would it stand out as something special? My own speculation is that it would not. Of course, this begs the question of how the poem came to be a sentimental favorite in the first place, which of course is quite an achievement for a poem, but it seems to me at least possible for a "bad poem" to achieve that status (again, think of "Trees"), or for a poem to be good enough to somehow achieve that status without being good enough to make a mark on those whose upbringing did not include it (someone like me).

Merely observing that its fairly standard meter is handled well isn't enough of an explanation, of course, since lots of less noteworthy poems can make the same claim, and I'm not seeing anything particularly dazzling or original in the choice of seven beat lines.

I'd be curious how Nemo's father used it to teach about life, since it doesn't speak to me about life in any original way that I can discern. Though the second line is wonderful, there's an awful lot of filler until the overtidy final line.

[R. Nemo Hill]

It is imbued with the repetitive rhythm of the sea that I find mesmerizing.

As for the family secrets, they shall remain so.

Nemo

[David Danoff]

I often think of Auden's remark: "Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."

If a poem/book/piece of music/etc. has been shared and loved by generations, however puzzling, however frustrating that fact might seem, there must be a reason. The winnowing of time is usually ruthless.

Anyway, I didn't grow up with this poem, and it does seem a little on the shallow side--not thick, not complex, not challenging, in the best modern way. But not everything has to work that way--why should it? And for what it's doing, there is a lot of lovely writing, memorable rhythms, and a few gentle hints of deeper meaning going on. (For instance, what is the speaker going from? And why are there no people in this fantasy, until the very end?)

Most of all, I think that a poem like this, with its evocative simplicity, can carry a lot more of the reader's own emotion. It's much easier, I think, to plug it into one's own life and family and childhood experiences, and fantasies, and memories, and all of that, than something more conventionally literary or complex. Like a song lyric--there's extra space within it that the reader can fill. And that has real value.

[Michael Cantor]

What Roger and David said. This was a favorite of mine when I was young, but so was tuna casserole and Milton Berle, and now I demand more. Many of the other poets I discovered as a kid - Sandburg and Kipling most notably - have stayed with me and I still love them, but the Masefield hasn't aged aswell. Technically, I think the poem is extremely well done - the rhythms and the long lines are terrific - and the essay and many of the accompanying responses elaborate on this. My problem is that it now seems shallow, too one-dimensional, and there's not enough of the sailor-at-heart in me or my youth to get past that. It is, however, an interesting choice, and plays nicely against some of the others. What a diversity!

[John Whitworth]

Wasn't 'The Lake Isle' recited in unison by a thousand boy scouts? Now there's a thing! Not only Yeats hated it. Robert Graves was of the same way of thinking. (Dee you and your Bee piano and the Bee loud noises you make on it! ) I like it though. And this one, though I agree with Orwn that 'Cargoes' is better. And 'If'. Good poem that. As for 'Trees' I know only the first two lines and that's only because of Ogden Nash. so I wouldn't call it memorable.

The most memorable lines of poetry I know are:

Awake! For morning in the bowl of night
Hath flung the stone that puts the stars to flight

and that's because my mother used to say it to wake me in the morning. John Mills, the actor, picked another bit of Omar Khayyam which he said he had remembered all his life.

The moving finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on, nor all thy piety or wit
Can move it back to cancel one half line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Chockful of quotations, that poem.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I'm in the "it's ok" camp with this one. It swashes but it doesn't buckle enough. Good ride with the meter, for sure, but I like the Kipling better.