Mary Gardiner Brainard

Mary Gardiner Brainard (1837–1905) was an American writer of religious poetry. She was the niece of poet John Gardiner Calkins Brainard.

Quotes

• I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;
  But I ’ve left the Past in God’s keeping,—the Future
  His mercy shall clear;
  And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.
  • Not knowing, published in The Congregationalist, March 1869, and set to music as a hymn by Philip Paul Bliss in the 1870s. Thomas Corts, Glimpses of Christian History Presents More Stories: Blessed Bliss, 2007.

• I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.
  • Not knowing (1869).

• That which we look on with unselfish love
  And true humility is surely ours,
  Even as a lake looks at the stars above
  And makes within itself a heaven of stars.
  • Ownership, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).