Adelaide Anne Procter
1825-1864 19th century
Thanksgiving that remembers to give thanks for the shadow too.
Who was Adelaide Anne Procter?
The daughter of a London poet, she sent her verse to Dickens under a false name, and he published her for years without knowing who she was. A Catholic from the age of twenty-six, she put her work at the service of homeless women: a night refuge at Providence Row, an anthology whose proceeds she gave away. In the 1860s she was the most widely read poet in England after Tennyson, and she wore herself out between the two labours: she died at thirty-eight.
In their own words
My God, I thank Thee who hast made the earth so bright; so full of splendour and of joy, beauty and light.
I thank Thee more that all our joy is touched with pain; that shadows fall on brightest hours, that thorns remain.
Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys.