This poem was written by the writer and cryptographer Leo Marks.
During the War, in order to get messages to spies working for the Allies in France and Holland, famous poems were used to encrypt messages. It worked well for a while, but then enemy cryptanalists got wise to this and managed to acquire copies of the original poems and compare them. It used to be thought that Marks had actually written this poem for the British agent Violette Szabo, who was working in France for the Special Operations Executive. However he had written it on Christmas Eve, 1943 in memory of his girlfriend who had just been killed in a plane crash in Canada. It was sent to Violette on the 24th March 1944 as an encrypted message, but it is not known whether this led directly to her capture, subsequent torture and death at Ravensbruck in February of 1945. She was just 23 years old.
The life that I have is all that I have
and the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have,
yet death shall be but a pause,
For the peace of my years in the long green grass
will be yours and yours and yours
Recent Comments