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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  What am I, Life?

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

What am I, Life?

By John Masefield

WHAT am I, Life? A thing of watery halt

Held in cohesion by unresting cells,

Which work they know not why, which never halt,

Myself unwitting where their Master dwells

I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin

A world which uses me as I use them;

Nor do I know which end or which begin

Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.

So, like a marvel in a marvel set,

I answer to the vast, as wave by wave

The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,

Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,

Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I

Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.