This poem was written by Masefield to commemorate the silver wedding anniversary of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The poem is written out by the calligrapher Dorothy Hutton (1889-1984) in blue and black with silver illuminations. George VI's reign encompassed the Second World War, and Masefield alludes to this in the last stanza, writing 'Our hopes become a praying, that the stress / Of these, their cruel years, may pass away, / And happy years succeed, and Wisdom bless.' John Masefield was poet laureate from 1930 to his death in 1967. He was a prolific poet and fiction writer, and by the end of his life his volume of 'Collected Poems' had sold over 200,000 copies. This was an unprecedented figure for a modern poet, and spoke to his popularity with readers. Today, however, he is perhaps most well known as a children's writer, having authored such classics as The Midnight Folk (1927) and The Box of Delights (1935).