A single missing word in John Masefield's 1902 poem 'Sea-Fever' has sparked a deeper look at rhythm, dialect and longing. The poem, first published in Salt Water Ballads, famously begins: 'I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky.' But the absence of the word 'go' has puzzled readers for decades.
Philip W Errington, editor of the 2023 collection 'Sea-Fever: Selected Poems', reprints the poem as it originally appeared, without 'go'. Masefield himself addressed the issue in 1927, stating: 'I notice that in the early edition, 1902, I print the line “I must down”. That was as I wrote the line in the first instance … When I am reciting the poem I usually insert the word “go”. When the poem is spoken I feel the need of the word but in print “go” is unnecessary and looks ill.'
The poem's rhythm is central to its appeal. Each quatrain uses a seven-beat line that joins what would be two lines in a traditional ballad, with a shanty-like call-and-response structure. The first couplet ends firmly on a stress, while the second revises the emphasis with feminine endings. The final line, 'And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over,' uses the short 'i' sound of 'trick' to clinch the poem's voyage towards death.
Masefield's early poems often draw on maritime dialect, but 'Sea-Fever' is less technical, focusing instead on verbs, assonance, and the conjunction 'and' to create a sense of movement and longing. The sea becomes an image of freedom, and the missing 'go' adds to the poem's timeless quality, whether spoken or read on the page.
