The fact is all the more remarkable when we turn for a moment to note the poet's grip on facts. We have just seen that profound sense of reality lying at the base of his technical realism; and it has been won, through a comprehensive experience, by virtue of the balance of his equipment. There is no bias here, of mind or spirit, which would have changed the clear humanity of the poet into the philosopher or the mystic. The naïveté and simple concrete imagery in the expression of religious feeling are far removed from mysticism. And, on the other hand, one cannot conceive of Mr Masefield formally ranged with the abstractions of either the materialist or the idealist school. Yet it is true that "Dauber" raises the practical issue between the two; and because the poet has realized life profoundly and dares to tell the truth about it, the triumph of the ideal is the more complete. He shows his hero scourged by the elements until all sense is lost but that of physical torture-- ... below He caught one giddy glimpsing of the deck Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow. ... all was an icy blast. Roaring from nether hell and filled with ice, Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage, An utter bridle given to utter vice, Limitless power mad with endless rage Withering the soul; With greater daring still we are shown the spirit itself, cowering in temporary defeat before material force-- "This is the end," he muttered, "come at last! I've got to go aloft, facing this cold. I can't. I can't. I'll never keep my hold. ... I'm a failure. All My life has been a failure. They were right. ..... I'll never paint. Best let it end to-night. I'll slip over the side. I've tried and failed." And then, finally, the poet does not shrink from the last and grimmest reality. He seems to say--Let material force do its utmost against this man. Admit the most dreadful possibility; shatter the life, with its fine promise, its aspiration and toil and precious perception of beauty, and fling it to the elements which claim it. Nevertheless the spirit will conquer, as it has won in the long fight hitherto and will continue to win. When the Dauber had been goaded almost beyond endurance by the cruelty of his shipmates, and when their taunts had availed at last to conjure in him a sickening doubt of his vocation, the poet represents him as turning instinctively to his easel, and healed in a moment of all the abasement and derision-- He dipped his brush and tried to fix a line, And then came peace, and gentle beauty came, Turning his spirit's water into wine, Lightening his darkness with a touch of flame: