Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | Page 8

wrecked her? he?Came equipped, deadly-electric,
7?A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England?Riding: there did storms not mingle? and
Hailropes hustle and grind their?Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?
8?Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom;?Now it overvaults Appledurcombe;
Now near by Ventnor town?It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.
9?Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!?Royal, and all her royals wore.
Sharp with her, shorten sail!?Too late; lost; gone with the gale.
10?This was that fell capsize,?As half she had righted and hoped to rise
Death teeming in by her portholes?Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.
11?Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;?'All hands for themselves' the cry ran then;
But she who had housed them thither?Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.
12?Marcus Hare, high her captain,?Kept to her--care-drowned and wrapped in
Cheer's death, would follow?His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.
13?All under Channel to bury in a beach her?Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,
He thought he heard say?'Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.'
14?It is even seen, time's something server,?In mankind's medley a duty-swerver,
At downright 'No or yes?'?Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.
15?Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,?(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)
Takes to the seas and snows?As sheer down the ship goes.
16?Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;?Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;
Till a lifebelt and God's will?Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.
17?Now he shoots short up to the round air;?Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;
But his eye no cliff, no coast or?Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.
18?Him, after an hour of wintry waves,?A schooner sights, with another, and saves,
And he boards her in Oh! such joy?He has lost count what came next, poor boy.--
19?They say who saw one sea-corpse cold?He was all of lovely manly mould,
Every inch a tar,?Of the best we boast our sailors are.
20?Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he?Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty,
And brown-as-dawning-skinned?With brine and shine and whirling wind.
21?O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!?Leagues, leagues of seamanship
Slumber in these forsaken?Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.
22?He was but one like thousands more,?Day and night I deplore
My people and born own nation,?Fast foundering own generation,
23?I might let bygones be--our curse?Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,
Robbery's hand is busy to?Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;
24?Only the breathing temple and fleet?Life, this wildworth blown so sweet,
These daredeaths, ay this crew, in?Unchrist, all rolled in ruin--
25?Deeply surely I need to deplore it,?Wondering why my master bore it,
The riving off that race?So at home, time was, to his truth and grace
26?That a starlight-wender of ours would say?The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way
And one--but let be, let be:?More, more than was will yet be.--
27?O well wept, mother have lost son;?Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:
Though grief yield them no good?Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.
28?But to Christ lord of thunder?Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:
'Holiest, loveliest, bravest,?Save my hero, O Hero savest.
29?And the prayer thou hearst me making?Have, at the awful overtaking,
Heard; have heard and granted?Grace that day grace was wanted.'
30?Not that hell knows redeeming,?But for souls sunk in seeming
Fresh, till doomfire burn all,?Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.
_18?The May Magnificat_
MAY is Mary's month, and I?Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,?Dated due to season--
Candlemas, Lady Day;?But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,?With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter?Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest?And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:?Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?--?Growth in every thing--
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,?Grass and green world all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted?Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin?Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell?In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing?Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,?Nature's motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind?With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored?Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:?Spring's universal bliss
Much, had much to say?To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple?Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry?With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes?Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall?Caps, clears, and clinches all--
This ecstacy all through mothering earth?Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth
To remember and exultation?In God who was her salvation.
_19?Binsey Poplars
felled 1879_
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,?Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,?All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank?On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding
bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew--?Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender?To touch, her being só slender,?That, like this