“Did I remember the Christmas speech by King George VI in 1939?.”
As I entered our sanctuary today, Gene Elliott asked if I was old enough to remember the Christmas speech by King George VI in 1939, looking into the darkness of a new year filled with war. I had to reply that I was not. She sat down and wrote out the quote. Here it is:
“The Gate of the Year”
“I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied, ‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.
So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.”
… Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), “The Desert” (c. 1908)
I found a blog site by Nancy J. Nordenson that summarized the history of the quote very well. If you do a Google search you will find much more!
- Haskins was an American lecturer at the London School of Economics. She wrote as a hobby. The quote is an excerpt from a poem she wrote called “The Gate of the Year” which was published in a volume called The Desert. The poem, which was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, gained international attention when King George VI quoted the above excerpt in his famous Christmas message broadcast in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War.
- It is engraved on bronze plaques on the entrance to the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor, where they are both interred, and was read at the funeral service of the Queen Mother, held at Westminster Abbey on April 9, 2002.
Quick question for you. We are trying to establish when the poem entitled, “The Gate of the Year” was published in The Desert. If you have any information we would greatly appreciate hearing from you.
Ruth Ann Johnson
Paralegal