The Life That I Have

By Leo Marks

Love and death are both opposites and two sides of the same coin, with one extreme making the other more profound. English cryptographer Leo Marks wrote these beautiful verses in Christmas 1943, just after the death of his girlfriend, Ruth, in a plane crash in Canada. Because it was so obscure, the poem was later used to encrypt messages between Allied spies in France, including Violette Szabo, the heroic British agent who was later captured and killed by the Nazis.

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 will be but a pause. For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours.