Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | Page 4

My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,

Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the
flame then, tower from the grace
to the grace.
4
I am soft sift
In an hourglass--at the wall
Fast, but mined with a
motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to
a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the
tall
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a
pressure, a principle, Christ's gift.
5
I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him
out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson
west:
Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder, His
mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet
him, and bless when I understand.
6
Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven
(and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt--
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms
deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt-- But

it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the
faithless fable and miss),
7
It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;
Warm-laid grave of a
womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden's knee;
The dense and the driven Passion, and
frightful sweat;
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,

Though felt before, though in high flood yet--
What none would have
known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
8
Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a
lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush!--flush the man, the being with it,
sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full!--Hither then, last or first,
To
hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it,
warned of it--men go.
9
Be adored among men,
God, three-numberèd form;
Wring thy rebel,
dogged in den,
Man's malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past
telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and
warm; Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark
descending and most art merciful then.
10
With an anvil-ding
And with fire in him forge thy will
Or rather,
rather then, stealing as Spring

Through him, melt him but master him still:
Whether at once, as once
at a crash Paul,
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,
Make
mércy in all of us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored
King.
_PART THE SECOND_
11
'Some find me a sword; some
The flange and the rail; flame,
Fang,
or flood' goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But wé dream we are rooted in
earth--Dust!
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the
same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe
cringe, and the blear share come.
12
On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take
settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round--
O Father, not under thy feathers nor
ever as guessing
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be
drowned; Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing
Not vault
them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve
even them in?
13
Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The
Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in
the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;

Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow
Spins to the

widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
14
She drove in the dark to leeward,
She struck--not a reef or a rock

But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead to the Kentish Knock;
And she beat the bank down with her
bows and the ride of her keel:
The breakers rolled on her beam with
ruinous shock;
And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel

Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.
15
Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with
tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone;
And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a
day
Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,
And lives at last
were washing away:
To the shrouds they took,--they shook in the
hurling and
horrible airs.
16
One stirred from the rigging to save
The wild woman-kind below,

With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave--
He was pitched to his death at a blow,
For all his dreadnought breast
and braids of thew:
They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and
fro
Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do
With the
burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?
17
They fought with God's cold--
And they could not and fell to the deck


(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled
With the sea-romp over the