The waiting faith of the naked trees,
The breath of a day so well begun,
Take what you will and leave me these.
Leave me my love and leave me these,
Leave me a soul to feel them still,
Better to be a tramp, who sees,
Than a monarch blind upon a hill.
1936
THE DREAMER
I stood in flowers, knee high,
Dreaming of gentleness,
Dreams, in the promise of a shining sky
That I should make a garden from a wilderness;
I would subdue the soil and make it chaste,
Making the desert bear, the useless good,
With my own strength I would redeem the waste,
Would grow the lily where the thistle stood.
The while I dreamed, the flowers were sweet,
Now that the flowers are gone, it seems
They never bloomed except in dreams.
There are no blossoms at my feet,
The bald blue sky is lustreless,
The flowers had never been, except in dreams,
It was a dream … this is a wilderness.
My eyes are tired of the skyline,
My feet are tired of the sand,
I am as dried of laughter as the sun-scorched land,
As the staff in my sun-scorched hand.
Had I not dreamed so long,
Not dreamed of so much beauty, or such grace,
Mayhap I could have trod a quieter path,
With other men, in a green, quieter place …
My ears are tired of the silence,
My heart is tired of the toil.
If I sowed any seeds, they have perished,
Nothing is living in the soil.
From the dewless morn I have been here,
Now the day is nearly through;
The tyrant sun sinks down at last,
The colours fade, the sun departs.
Was there a glory – or was that a dream?
I hear, or think I hear, faint music:
Not the song of birds, which are fled from me,
Not the humming of bees, on dream blossom,
Not the voices of happy men …
I strain to catch the sound again …
Oh! let the music swell, slowly,
Mould a stately music, to soothe the pulse of the earth,
Develop the theme –
Do I pray? or hope? or dream?
I do not know if I dreamed I stood in a garden.
(Was it a dream, the flowers’ caress?)
Or did I dream of the sun and the sand –
Am I dreaming this wilderness?
1937
But while both spiritual and political questions demanded answers, there were others of a more personal nature to be asked as well. Philip had known Joan Grayling, his future wife, since childhood. We can surmise she is the muse in Philip’s sometimes stormy poems of love.
DISTRUST
He saw the clouds creep up in stormy herds,
He saw clouds hiding the eternal tors
And clouds like a flock of wild white birds
Winging across the sky towards the moors.
Walking alone he saw the high clouds reeling
In the changing skies,
But his eyes were afraid and seeking,
The voice in his heart was speaking,
And he felt that the clouds were a ceiling
Darkly forbidding his petulant spirit to rise.
Solitude mocked silently.
Sickened, he asked, “Oh, has she faith in me –
The faith that makes men heroes?”
Long after the echo, came a faint reply:
“Find in yourself a faith as true,
Faith is made, not of talk, but deeds,
Lest she go loving on, but you –
Go back to a harvest of weeds.”
1936
VALENTINE VERSE
If we should walk in moonlight,
My valentine and I,
In slow step, by a stream of stars
Where water lilies lie:
Where the elm trees stand in silence
Down the hill like a line of kings,
And alone, in a world that listens,
The nightingale sings:
Sweet the smell of the meadow,
Cool the kiss of the breeze,
A dainty foot and a steady foot,
Step slowly under the trees.
If we should walk in moonlight,
While we and our love are young,
We should hear a softer music
Than the nightingale has sung.
1937
We heard a call and hurried here
Philip graduated from the University of Bristol in the spring of 1939. Now he had a degree in horticulture and a title: Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society. He seemed poised to enter a secure position in one of England’s institutions of learning and research. In June he and Joan were married. The couple moved into a beautiful stone house with a walled garden, which they had recently purchased.
But war was in the air, and Philip had meanwhile become a convinced pacifist. What was he to do if he was called up for military service?
Philip was not alone in his stance. The Peace Pledge Union, founded in 1936, asked its members to sign this statement: “War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.” The Great War had been “the war to end all wars,” but all the blood and sacrifice seemed only to usher in new bloodshed. In her autobiographical Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain recounted the losses of her generation, to conclude: “Never again.” Philip had joined the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) in 1938, participating with great enthusiasm. He spoke about war and peace in Sunday school classes and started a local PPU chapter in 1939. Joan shared his faith and his commitment to peace.
News from the Continent got worse. Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938 was followed by his invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later Britain declared war on Germany.
Winston Churchill gave rousing speeches: “We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred