Blog Archive

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 


That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- 
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches. 
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches, 
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. 
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare 
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches 
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches 
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there 
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. 
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark 
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! 
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark 
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone 
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark 
                            Is any of him at all so stark 
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, 
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. 
                            Across my foundering deck shone 
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash 
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: 
                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and 
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, 
                            Is immortal diamond. 



No comments:

Post a Comment

  The poet Susan Howe, 77, at right, and her daughter, the painter R. H. Quaytman, 53, in Quaytman’s house, designed by the American sculpto...