A tale of two Poets
Posted: August 6, 2009 by stevie
Gate of the Year - Minnie Louise Harkins
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.”
Invictus — William Ernest Henley
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I was a little bit of a literary rat when I was younger but I was never much into poetry. Two poems really stand out to me. The first is the “Gate of the Year”, which was introduced to me by the booming voice of Ravi Zacharias when he came down to speak in GTPJ a few years back. The second, “Invictus” was first heard during my revolutionary university years, when the last two lines were perhaps the most inspiring phrases of defiance in the midst of exams and assignments: “I am the master of my fate! I am the captain of my soul!!”
How strange, that these two poems (perhaps the only two that I ever bothered to remember) would have such different extremes in the way life is viewed: One, a gentle submission to life’s vicissitudes, and putting it in God’s hands; the other, very much like our way of approaching exams in Uni, convincing ourselves we are the masters of our own destiny.
William Ernest Henley wrote the poem from the hospital bed, as he was bed ridden early in life due to tubercolosis. He died at the age of 53, after a lifelong struggle with the disease. More ominiously, the poem was used as the last words of Timothy McVeigh before he was executed, convicted for the 1995 Oklahoma Bombing that killed over 160 people.
Minnie Louise Harkins wrote the words of the Gate of the Year at her home, while sitting at the balcony, and put it aside. It was called ‘God Knows’ back then and it was an anonymous poem written on greeting cards and such. She led a simple life, and most of her works focused on helping people and tutoring students in the London School of Economics. At the start of the second world war, King George VI read part of the poem as his Christmas message to England. It was broadcasted nationally which astounded even Minnie Louise herself. Her subsequent royalties received from the usage of her poem, she donated to charities. Britian went on to fight back the German troops and became the critical lynchpin in which the Allies would launch their attacks from later in the war.
Both poems were beautifully written, but each brought different inspirations to different people. One, a poem that contends the absence of an eternal being, almost struggles with its own rhetoric: is man truly the captain of his own soul? What happens beyond this life, when we are no longer the masters of our fate?
In another, the simple faith in God, as she admits that she has no idea what lies ahead, or how she would approach the coming year. But with trust in the hand that holds tomorrow, she gladly steps forward, knowing there is one who is the master of her fate, the captain of her soul.
Tags:gate of the year, invictus