O Christ who holds the open gate

O Christ who holds the open gate. John Masefield* (1878-1967).   From Masefield’s The Everlasting Mercy (1911), a poem telling the story of Saul Kane, a name, as Timothy Dudley-Smith has noted, surely chosen for its Biblical resonances (2016, p. 12). Kane leads a brutal, drunken and rebellious life, from which he gradually turns through the influence of others and the beauty of nature. The image of the gate recurs in the later part of the poem, which needs to be read in full to allow a complete appreciation of the lines found in hymnbooks. The poem was attacked by some for its portrayal of the established church, but these lines were evidently perceived by Dearmer (who was not always the...