A newly discovered manuscript reveals that along with being a journalist, essayist, author and novelist, Winston Churchill was also a poet.

Roy Davids, a retired manuscript dealer from Great Haseley in Oxfordshire has discovered the only poem written by Winston Churchill, revealing that the historian, biographer and renowned speaker was also a poet. The discovery comes a hundred and fifteen years after the poem was written.

The Guardian reveals that the poem is highly inspired by Lord Alfred Tennyson and Rudyard Kipling and has been titled "Our Modern Watchwords." The poem is reported to have been written around 1889 or 1990.  However, critics say that this cannot be considered among Churchill's better works. While most agree that this could be one of the most exciting Churchill discoveries, the work is just "passable". Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate calls the poem "heavy-footed."

"I didn't know he wrote poems, though somehow I'm not surprised: oils, walls, why not poems as well?" said Motion. "This is pretty much what would expect: reliable, heavy-footed rhythm; stirring, old-fashioned sentiments. Except for the lines 'The tables of the evening meal/Are spread amid the great machines', where the shadow of Auden passes over the page, and makes everything briefly more surprising."

The poem will go on sale at Bonham's auction house in London in the spring. The poem has been written in blue crayon on two sheets of 4th Hussars-headed notepaper and experts predict it will fetch approximately $19,000 to $24,000.

Read below an Extract from Our Modern Watchwords (Published by The Guardian)

The shadow falls along the shore

The search lights twinkle on the sea

The silence of a mighty fleet

Portends the tumult yet to be.

The tables of the evening meal

Are spread amid the great machines

And thus with pride the question runs

Among the sailors and marines

Breathes there the man who fears to die

For England, Home, & Wai-hai-wai.

II

The Admiral slowly paced the bridge

His mind intent on famous deed

Yet ere the battle joined he thought

Of words that help mankind in deed

Words that might make sailors think

Of Hopes beyond all earthly laws

And add to hard and heavy toil

the glamour of a victim(?) cause