English poet, playwright and novelist. His early poems were of the sea (Salt-Water Ballads, 1902; Ballads, 1903, etc.). He also wrote sketches of buccaneers, On the Spanish Main (1906), and two stirring novels, Captain Margaret (1908) and Multitude and Solitude (1909), as well as editing The Voyages of Captain William Dampier. But narrative poetry and drama proved his natural means of expression, as he showed in his poems The Everlasting Mercy (1911); The Widow in the Bye-Street (1912); Dauber (1913); The Daffodil Fields (1913); Lollingdon Downs (1917); Reynard the Fox (1919); Right Royal (1920); Enslaved and other Poems (1920); King Cole (1921); and in his somber plays, The Campden Wonder (1907); The Tragedy of Nan (1909); Pompey the Great (1910); The Faithful (1915); and Good Friday (1916). He also published some prose war sketches, Gallipoli (1916); The Old Front Line (1918); St. George and the Dragon (1919).
