The Call

Down beyond the strand goes a mystery

On and on and the gulls stand knowing

With their flinty eyes

Light seeps out of the windows

From the mind's inner districts

And the gulls feel the scraw of the sand

In a low hesitant breeze

The sea gives up her dead

Shards of driftbone to bleach white

It was the unknown

Companion to Ulysses

Who heard its mournful calling

For Masefield’s constance

It bestowed immortality

'I must,’ he said

And for him

there was no other turning

across the way of understanding