Seafarer vs Seafever

885 Words4 Pages
Bryan Thompson The Seafarer vs. Sea Fever The Seafarer and Sea Fever are two poems about the sea, but were written milestones apart. The Sea Farer was found recorded in the Exeter Book and has been translated from Old English. No one knows who the author is but one can safely assume a sailor wrote it. During this time, conditions on a ship were horrible and sailors could become so malnourished that scurvy would often overcome them. On top of that, ships could easily stray off course because the only devices used back then were an astrolabe and the stars. By the time “Sea Fever” was written advances in marine devices, medical advances, and better ships made life at sea much easier and safer. Like ‘Seafarer”, “Sea Fever” was written by a sailor, John Masefield, who also had a love and talent for poetry. “The Seafarer” is filled with different kinds of imagery. Imagery is anything visually descriptive that appeals to one of the senses. Throughout the first part of the poem, the sailor writes about the weather and how utterly cold it is. The sailor says his feet were “cast in icy bands, bound with frost, With frozen chains, and hardship groaned,” which helps us visually see how he is extremely cold and that he is a prisoner or in exile. Lines 15 through 19 go on even further describing “an ice cold sea,” and how his body is “hung with icicles” and “the freezing waves.” These are negative images that describe the lonely and extreme cold experienced at sea. The sailor never mentions man, but he does talk of “The death-noise of birds”, “The mewing of gulls”, and “icy feathered terns.” The sailor feels connected to the birds because they too endure the same hardships at sea. In lines 33 through 40, the author talks about how his heart “would begin to beat” and his “soul Called me eagerly out”. These are positive images
Open Document