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Realised I hadn't posted this childhood favourite until the IOTD thread bout his moustache. I know most of it by heart, may make an attempt to learn it properly now for the sheer richness I will be committing to memory.
Read it aloud. I was read it when I was ten. It was the first time I realised poetry wasn't just about rhyming. Listen to the syllables in the last verse. There is a good reason this is in every British poetry book for schoolchildren.
Cargoes
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
John Masefield
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Life's hard you know, so strike a pose on a Cadillac
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