$15.00 CAD
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Two UK postcards with same design, verses from poem by M.L. Haskins. It was read on the Christmas 1939 radio broadcast to the British Empire by George VI during as inspiration in the early days of WW2.
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year-
“Give me a 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 than light and safer than a known way.”
Copyright M.L. Haskins
Quoted by His Majesty the King in an Empire Broadcast
Both printed by Valentine's. Design #315. One part of Valentine's Helpful Thoughts' series.
One has message dated 1943 "...I have heard from Fred Sheppard from Germany. I shall be writing to George -- prisoner with the Japs.,,,
The poem, written in 1908 caught the public attention and the popular imagination when King George VI quoted it in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire. The poem may have been brought to his attention by his wife, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Consort).
The book The Servant Queen and the King She Serves, published for Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday, says that it was the young Princess Elizabeth herself, aged 13, who handed the poem to her father.
The poem was widely acclaimed as inspirational, reaching its first mass audience in the early days of the Second World War. Its words remained a source of comfort to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, for the rest of her life. Elizabeth had its words engraved on stone plaques and fixed to the gates of the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle, where the King was interred.
