POEM RECALLED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20131, 28 December 1939, Page 7

POEM RECALLED

KING’S QUOTATION ! AUTHORSHIP DISCLOSED ALMOST FORGOTTEN WRITTEN BEFORE 1914 (Klee. Tnl. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Dec. 28, 9 a.m.) LONDON, Dec. 27. The British Broadcasting Corporation has revealed that the author of the quotation used by the King in his Christmas Day broadcast is Miss M. L. Haskins, who wrote the lines as an introduction to a volume of verses privately printed and circilated many years ago. Miss Haskins, a novelist and poet, living at Crowborough, was employed before the war as a tutor in the London School of Economics. She listened to the King’s broadcast and said the quotation sounded familiar, but she did not immediately realise it was from her own poem. She said that the poem containing the quotation is called “God Knows.”

Miss Haskins confessed that she only vaguely remembered the circumstances in which the lines were written. “It was before .1914 and 1 believe I was in the West Country when the inspiration came to me,” she said.

During his broadcast speech on Christmas Day the King said: “I fee! that we may all find a message of encouragement in lines which, in my closing words, I would like to read to you. They are: ‘I said to the man who stood at the gate of years: “Give me light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better light than light and safer than the known way." '