“HERE TIME STANDS STILL…..”

Ralph Miller wrote this poem when he was a prisoner of war. In its sense of frustration and powerlessness in an uncertain world while waiting for liberation, it mirrors the longing of Jewish people in captivity in Egypt and many years later as their successors waited for the Advent – the “coming” of the Lord, and the first Christmas. Perhaps Ralph’s thoughts, expressed in a language and at a time within reach of our own generations, will help us to identify closer with the significance of Advent…..

Here time stands still,

And high the hill,

And castle – crowned its hoary head

With walls as thick and moat as wide

As any donjon fortified

In troublous days of old. Life’s dead

Where time stands still.

Here time stands still.

No sound without affects the tenor of our way,

And life goes on without a song

And days are short and night is long

And smiles are few and hairs are gray

Where time stands still.

Here time stands still,

And all the hours merge into one unending hour

And day by day life’s toneless hue

Proves relativity is true:

And down the unending centuries

Lives on youth’s withered flower

Where time stands still.

Here time stands still.

The living hours are those when dreaming, sunk in sleep,

The inward eye’s discerning sight

Sees home through shadows of the night;

And out of Lethe’s morphine cup

The pining soul drinks deep

Where time stands still.

Here time stands still,

While those without may fight their war the free to save

With aeroplane and bomb and hate,

To civilise, to liberate:

Then open up the course of time

The late filled grave

Where time stood still.

Written in December 1944 after arrival at Offlag IXAH Spangenberg from the Commonwealth POW hospital near Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany. The majority of IXAH inmates were Dunkirk veterans, many from 51 Highland Division of St Valery fame.

December 1944

Ralph Miller