THE QUEEN MARY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12398, 10 November 1934, Page 10

THE QUEEN MARY

MR MASEFIELD'S NEW POEM,

LONDON, September 27. The launching of the Cunard liner Queen Mary afforded Mr -John Masefield an all too rare opportunity of ex ercising his gift Poet Laureate. Though Mr Masefield was on his way to Melbourne at the time of the naming of the monster liner, he was at John Brown’s shipyard in imagination, and his tribute was included in the souvenir programme prepared for the King and Queen when they attended the launching. It has been estimated that the Cunarder, in ni o . tion, took the Clyde waters with a mass exceeding 140,000 tons. This is the Poet Laureate’s poem:—

For ages you were rock, far below light, Crushed, without shape, earth’s unregarded bone. Then Man, in all the marvel of his might, ■ Quarried you out and burned you from the stone. Then, being pured to essence, you were naught But weight and hardness, body without nerve; Then Alan, in all the marvel of his thought, Smithied you into form of leap and curve; And took you so and bent you to his” vast Intense great world of passionate design, Curve after changing curving, brace and mas To (.stand all tumult that can tumble brine. And left you, this, a rampart ,of a ship, Long as a street and lofty as a tower, Ready to glide in thunder from the slip, And shear the sea with majesty of power. I long to see you leaping to the urge Of great engine?, rolling as yon go. Parting the seas in sunder in a surge, Shredding a trackway like a mile of isnow. t With all the wester streaming from your hull, And all gear twanging shrilly as you race. And effortless above your stem a gull Leaning upon the blast and keeping place. May shipwreck and collision, fog and fire, Rock, shoal, and other evils of the (sea Be kept from' you; and • may the heart’s desire Of those who (Speed "our launching come to be.