This manuscript is a copy in his own hand of the poem that John Masefield composed for the fourth anniversary of the death of King George V. King George V was on the throne when Masefield was appointed Poet Laureate in 1930, and Masefield wrote many occasional poems for him. Masefield was 62 when he wrote this memorial poem in 1940 and it communicates a sombre and quiet sense of his own mortality, as well as that of his erstwhile monarch.

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).