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 to man…. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.”
The peace movement caved in. Hundreds broke their pledge never to support war again and threw their energy into defending England. Even the chapter of the Peace Pledge Union that Philip had started succumbed to the militant mood sweeping the country: most members rushed to defend the homeland against Hitler’s threatened invasion.
Then came a real blow: England’s churches followed suit, joining its politicians in calling on the populace to support the war effort. But as lonely as Philip and Joan felt in their commitment to peace, they would not yield. They still hoped that it was not too late to avert war.
INSANITY
We see mad scientists watching tubes and flasks,
Staring at fluids with the power of death;
Mad engineers that work out guns of steel
And make great bombs that carry poison breath.
We hear mad statesmen speak of peace through arms,
We read wild praises of the power that rends;
And in the pulpits of the church of Christ
Mad clergy tell us to destroy our friends.
We hear the drone of planes that townsmen build
To scatter death and terror in the town;
And hear the roar of tanks on country roads
That will mow down our brothers, crush them down.
Lest this should happen, still more ships are launched;
To ward off war, we spend more gold on arms,
And lest the voice of Christ is heard to groan,
We sound, more loudly, still more wild alarms.
UNDATED
England was mobilising. In May 1939 Parliament had passed the Military Training Act: twenty-one- and twenty-two-year old men could expect to be called up for six months of military service. The day war was declared, all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one became liable for call-up.
Philip had dreamt of “so much beauty” and of “making a garden in the wilderness,” but what did the God he served want him to do in the realities of everyday life – in “the din of busy living” and the preparations for war?
Several years later, Philip told a story of this time: He had been in church listening
