“There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.”

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 2

"Books and Men" in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1901).

Nobel lecture, 2001

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857

"I Would Live in Your Love"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

The first line is often misquoted as "I must go down to the seas again." and this is the wording used in the song setting by John Ireland. I disagree with this last point. The poet himself was recorded reading this and he definitely says "seas". The first line should read, 'I must down ...' not, 'I must go down ...' The original version of 1902 reads 'I must down to the seas again'. In later versions, the author inserted the word 'go'.


Source: https://poemanalysis.com/sea-fever-john-masefield-poem-analysis/
Salt-Water Ballads (1902), "Sea-Fever"

Prologue (p. 4).
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
Context: The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before.

Source: Zorba the Greek

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 189