ees the deck

Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow.

In that line we seem to behold the beautiful face of danger--a beauty
that is in some way complementary to the beauty of the endurance of
ships and the endurance of men. For the ship is saved, and so is the
Dauber's soul, and the men who had been bullies in hours of peace reveal
themselves as heroes in stress and peril.

_Dauber_, it will be seen, is more than an exciting story of a storm. It
is a spiritual vision of life. It is a soul's confession. It is Mr.
Masefield's _De Profundis_. It is a parable of trial--a chant of the
soul that has "emerged out of the iron time." It is a praise of life,
not for its own sake, but for the spiritual mastery which its storms and
dangers bring. It is a paean of survival: the ship weathers the storm to
go boldly forward again:--

A great grey sea was running up the sky,
Desolate birds flew past; their mewings came
As that lone water's spiritual cry,
Its forlorn voice, its essence, its soul's name.
The ship limped in the water as if lame,
Then, in the forenoon watch, to a great shout,
More sail was made, the reefs were shaken out.

Not even the death of the Dauber in a wretched accident defeats our
sense of divine and ultimate victory. To some readers this fatality may
seem a mere luxury of pathos. But it is an essential part of the scheme
of the poem. The poet must state his acceptance of life, not only in its
splendid and tragic dangers, but in its cruelty and pathetic
wastefulness. He must know the worst of it in order to put the best of
it to the proof. The worst passes, the best continues--that is the
secret enthusiasm of Mr. Masefield's song. Our final vision is of the
ship in safety, holding her course to harbour in a fair wind:--

Shattering the sea-tops into golden rain.
The waves bowed down before her like blown grain.

And as she sits in Valparaiso harbour, a beautiful thing at peace under
the beautiful shadow of "the mountain tower, snow to the peak," our
imagination is lifted to the hills-to where

All night long
The pointed mountain pointed at the stars,
Frozen, alert, austere.

It is a fine symbol of the aspiration of this book of men's "might,
their misery, their tragic power." There is something essentially
Christian and simple in Mr. Masefield's presentation of life. Conscious
though he is of the pain of the worl