The father lived on to the age of ninety. John
Keble's love for God and his devotion to the Church had often been
expressed in verse. On days which the Church specially celebrated,
he had from time to time written short poems to utter from the heart
his own devout sense of their spiritual use and meaning. As the
number of these poems increased, the desire rose to follow in like
manner the while course of the Christian Year as it was marked for
the people by the sequence of church services, which had been
arranged to bring in due order before the minds of Christian
worshippers all the foundations of their faith, and all the elements
of a religious life. A book of poems, breathing faith and worship
at all points, and in all attitudes of heavenward contemplation,
within the circle of the Christian Year, would, he hoped, restore in
many minds to many a benumbed form life and energy.
In 1825, while the poems of the Christian Year were gradually being
shaped into a single work, a brother became able to relieve John
Keble in that pious care for which his father had drawn him away
from a great University career, and he then went to a curacy at
Hursley, four or five miles from Winchester.
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