John Masefield, (born June 1, 1878, Ledbury, Herefordshire, Eng.—died May 12, 1967, near Abingdon, Berkshire), poet, best known for his poems of the sea, Salt-Water Ballads (1902, including “Sea Fever” and “Cargoes”), and for his long narrative poems, such as The Everlasting Mercy (1911), which shocked literary orthodoxy with its phrases of a colloquial coarseness hitherto unknown in 20th-century English verse. Educated at King’s School, Warwick, Masefield was apprenticed aboard a…