On The Subject Of Poetry

I have been researching the life of John "the Craze" Masefield and have discovered that in addition to being a sailor, writer, and poet laureate, he was also a devoted bodyboarder. In fact the original version of his most famous poem, "Sea-Fever", was actually entitled "Sponger-Fever". As you will see in the opening stanza of the first draft, Masefield knew all too well the joy and longing which haunts the blood of many a wave-rider:

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a good board and a wave to ride her by,
And the fin's kick and the wind's song and the inner rail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and double overheads breaking.

Then as now, bodyboarding was derided as the lesser of wave sports, having taken a back seat to surfing ever since Rudyard Kipling penned his immortal "The Longboarder's Burden". Masefield caved in under pressure from his editors and retooled the poem as a sailor's song, thereby securing his immortal fame and burying his secret heart.