
Li rois d'Engleterre et li sien, qui s'en venoient tout singlant, regardent et voient devers l'Escluse si grant quantité de vaissiaus que des mas ce sambloient droitement uns bos.
Book 1, p. 62.
Chroniques (1369–1400)
"A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Li rois d'Engleterre et li sien, qui s'en venoient tout singlant, regardent et voient devers l'Escluse si grant quantité de vaissiaus que des mas ce sambloient droitement uns bos.
Book 1, p. 62.
Chroniques (1369–1400)
“Stood for his country’s glory fast,
And nail’d her colours to the mast!”
Canto I, introduction, st. 10.
Marmion (1808)
“He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.”
Source: The Old Man and the Sea
“The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.”
Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 144
“Mind working is man, mind working fast is mad, mind slowed down is Mast and mind stopped is God.”
General sources
Genius; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 88.
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"