Cover of the first edition The Everlasting Mercy is a poem by

John Masefield John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967, during which time he lived at Burcot, Oxfordshire, near Abingdon ...

, the UK's second longest serving poet laureate after

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

. It was published in 1911 and is styled as the confession of a man who has turned from sin to Christianity. As a work that first made Masefield famous, it shocked early 20th-century British sensibilities with its direct, honest, and therefore often harsh language, as the life of protagonist violent, drunken womanizer Saul Kane is laid out in detail.

In Popular Media

In the third episode of the American TV series ''

Peter Gunn ''Peter Gunn'' is an American detective fiction, private eye television series, starring Craig Stevens (actor), Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn with Lola Albright as his girlfriend, lounge singer Edie Hart. The series was broadcast by NBC from Sept ...

'', ''The Vicious Dog'', the last line is the antagonist's, asked why he'd committed the crimes, responding with a quote from ''The Everlasting Mercy'': The poem is also mentioned in William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions”. One of the characters is reading a book of poetry by John Mansfield while on the deck of a boat as it passes the Rock of Gibraltar.

References

External links

1911 poems {{poem-stub