Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | Page 7

what not else makes rare:?They rain against our much-thick and marsh air?Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end?I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot?fóllows kínd,?Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
_11?The Sea and the Skylark_
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench--right, the tide that ramps against the shore;?With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,?Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score?In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour?And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,?Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:?Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.
_12?The Windhover:
To Christ our Lord_
I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, kingdom
of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,
in his riding?Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and
striding?High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing?In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:
the hurl and gliding?Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding?Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the
thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a
billion?Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down
sillion?Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
_13?Pied Beauty_
GLORY be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:?Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and
plough;?And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;?He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
_14?Hurrahing in Harvest_
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
stooks rise?Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely?behaviour?Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier?Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our?Saviour;?And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a?Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding
shoulder?Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!--?These things, these things were here and but the
beholder?Wanting; which two when they once meet,?The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off?under his feet.
_15?Caged Skylark_
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house,?dwells--?That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;?This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,?Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells?Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--?Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,?But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
_16?In the Valley of the Elwy_
I REMEMBER a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:?Comforting smell breathed at very entering,?Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.?That cordial air made those kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing?Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:?Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.
Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,?All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;
Only the inmate does not correspond:?God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,?Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.
_17?The Loss of the Eurydice
Foundered March 24. 1878_
1?THE Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord:?Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
Some asleep unawakened, all unwarned,?eleven fathoms fallen
2?Where she foundered! One stroke?Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
And flockbells off the aerial?Downs' forefalls beat to the burial.
3?For did she pride her, freighted fully, on?Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?--
Precious passing measure,?Lads and men her lade and treasure.
4?She had come from a cruise, training seamen--?Men, boldboys soon to be men:
Must it, worst weather,?Blast bole and bloom together?
5?No Atlantic squall overwrought her?Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:
Home was hard at hand?And the blow bore from land.
6?And you were a liar, O blue March day.?Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;
But what black Boreas