He was born 1 June 1878 in the town of Ledbury in a Victorian house known as Knapp, with vistas of the fields and woodlands of Herefordshire. In later years, recalling his childhood at Knapp with its orchard and garden, the poet referred to it in the autobiography So Long to Learn (1952) as "living in Paradise," and he describes an experience there which Constance Babington Smith in her John Masefield: A Life (1978) calls "the birth of creative imagination in him": "Then, on one wonderful day, when I was a little more than five years old, as I stood looking north, over a clump of honeysuckle in flower, I entered that greater life; and that life entered into me with a delight that I can never forget." It was a moment of euphoria similar to those recorded by other poets as diverse in time and temperament as Henry Vaughan, William Wordsworth, and Robert Bridges. The beauty of rural England, the beauty of music, and certain verses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and other poets recited to him by his mother were also early and strong in- fluences on his later poetry.
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