Salt-Water Ballads

Some of this book was written in my boyhood, all of it in my youth; it is now re-issued, much as it was when first published nearly eleven years ago. J. M.

You’ll mainsail-haul my bits o’ things when Christ has took my soul, ’N’ you’ll lay me quiet somewhere at the landward end the Mole, Where I shall hear the steamers’ sterns a-sq...

O! the fiddle on the fo’c’s’le, and the slapping naked soles, And the genial ‘Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!’ With the silver seas around us and the pale moo...

“A genuine sailor and a genuine poet are a rare combination; they have produced a rare poem of the sea, which has made Mr. Masefield’s position in literature secure beyond the r...