"The Gate of the Year" is the popular name given to a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins. The title given to it by the author was "God Knows". She studied and then taught at the London School of Economics in the first half of the twentieth century.
And 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 out 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. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
Let us listen attentively to a meditation on this poem by Fr Michael Mary - of the Transalpine Redemptorists - who live on Papa Stronsay.
This poem, published in 1908, was part of a collection titled The Desert. It caught the public attention and the popular imagination when the then–Princess Elizabeth handed a copy to her father, King George VI, and he quoted it in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire.
The poem was widely acclaimed as inspirational, reaching its first mass audience in the early days of the Second World War. Its words have remained a source of comfort to the Queen for the rest of her life, and she had its words engraved on brass plaques and fixed to the gates of the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle, where the King was interred. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was also buried here in 2002, and the words of "The Gate of the Year" were read out at her funeral.
As we begin a New Year, let us ask for God's blessing on our Queen.
God save our gracious Queen,
long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
happy and glorious,
long to reign over us,
God save the Queen!
Thy choicest gifts in store
on her be pleased to pour,
long may she reign:
may she defend our laws,
and ever give us cause
to sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen!
Happy New Year!
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