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 widely acclaimed as inspirational, reaching its first mass audience in the early days of the Second World War.
The Queen Mother was also buried there in 2002, and the words of "The Gate of the Year" were included in a reflection in her funeral's order of service.
[citation needed] The poem was included in the closing moments of the 1940 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Frank Borzage film The Mortal Storm, starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Robert Young.
'God Knows' 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".