They say it is a King

They say it is a King. Michael Field* (Katharine Harris Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862-1913).  This hymn was published in Mystic Trees (1913), published in the name of Michael Field, though containing poems by Bradley alone. Cooper, her niece and lover, had become a Roman Catholic in 1907, followed by Bradley not long after: her imaginative hymn on the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Luke 2: 22-35) was included in the revised Westminster Hymnal (1940). It had five stanzas, written in the shortest metre (66.66) and simplest language:  They say it is a King His temple entering; His temple doth not rock With gust and earthquake shock.  But all the air is stilled, As at a...

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