<P> "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 . </P> <P> The poem, written in 1908 and privately published in 1912, was part of a collection titled The Desert . It caught the public attention and the popular imagination when King George VI quoted it in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire . The poem was brought to his attention by his wife, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Consort . </P> <P> The book The Servant Queen and the King She Serves published for Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday, and with a Foreword by Queen Elizabeth, says that it was the young Elizabeth herself, aged 13, who handed the poem to her father . </P> <P> The poem was widely acclaimed as inspirational, reaching its first mass audience in the early days of the Second World War . Its words remained a source of comfort to the Queen for the rest of her life, and she had its words engraved on stone 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 included in a reflection in her funeral order of service . </P>

As i stood at the gate of the year