Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | Page 4

a principle, Christ's gift.
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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.
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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),
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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_
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'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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 wreck.?Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check-- Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,?A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
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Ah, touched in your bower of bone?Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,?Have you! make words break from me here all alone,
Do you!--mother of being in me, heart.?O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth,?Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel and river of youth,?What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
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Sister, a sister calling?A master, her master and mine!--?And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine?Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;?Has one fetch in her: