Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Harry R]

Hopkins has been on my mind over the past few days. I find the enjoyment I get from his work if anything increases with familiarity and the passing of time. He's a bit of a writer's writer, I think - there's nothing like trying to write a few poems to appreciate how magical are the effects Hopkins achieves.

http://www.bartleby.com/122/gmh2b.gif

 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.


The Windhover
To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]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
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


God’s Grandeur


THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
[color=CCCCCC]...[/color]World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

[SarahJF]

Wow.

I could drown in those. The sounds alone. The movement.

But it's careful, too - reigned in.

Having said that, this is the first time I've seen these, and I don't read properly on a computer screen, so I'm going to print out, and take them into the garden.

This seems like the kind of poetry that you know is going to stay with you, but not quite which bits, and in which order. One of those real 'gain the more you think about' things that'll ambush you when you're preparing tea, and then again on a walk, and again somewhere else.

Thanks for posting, Harry.


Sarah

[HowardM2]

"Spring"

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.


"Pied Beauty'

GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color 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 all trades, 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.


"Inversnaid'

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.



"Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord"

JUSTUS quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum properatur? etc.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.


"Carrion Comfort"

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

[cookala]

Harry, Thanks for posting this - I'm not familiar with his work, but I will be making it a point to become so. The sounds, the music of it - they sing to me. wow. kinda reminds me of PB Shelley, in the way I get drawn up into the rhythm of the words.

[Dunc]

Back when I met Hopkins we had that Penguin Hopkins whose intro was concerned to ask whether Hopkins was a great minor poet or a minor great poet. Fortunately it gets better when you read him.

And in there with all those freakin h's - Heaney, Herrick, Hughes, even Housman; and in Oz, Hope and (mebbe) Harwood.


TOM’S GARLAND

upon the unemployed

Tom - garlanded with squat and surly steel
Tom; then Tom's fallowbootfellow piles pick
By him and rips out rockfire homeforth - sturdy Dick;
Tom Heart-at-ease, Tom Navvy: he is all for his meal
Sure, 's bed now. Low be it: lustily he his low lot (feel
That ne'er need hunger, Tom; Tom seldom sick,
Seldomer heartsore; that treads through, prickproof, thick
Thousands of thorns thoughts) swings though. Commonweal
Little I reck ho! lacklevel in, if all had bread:
What! Country is honour enough in all us - lordly head,
With heaven's lights high hung round, or, mother-ground
That mammocks, mighty foot. But no way sped,
Nor mind nor mainstrength; gold go garlanded
With, perilous, O no; nor yet plod safe shod sound;
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspUndenizened, beyond bound
Of earth's glory, earth's ease, all; no one, nowhere,
In wide the world's weal; rare gold, bold steel, bare
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspIn both; care, but share care -
This, by Despair, bred Hangdog dull; by Rage,
Manwolf, worse; and their packs infest the age.

[Lola Two]

I would give a rib to see the poetry he burned after converting to Roman Catholicism. Of all the atrocities perpetrated by the Church, directly and indirectly, that has to rank in my top sixty.
I'm sure they were no masterpieces, but they would be fascinating to read--like Eliot's Inventions of the March Hare.

Lola

[Harry R]

I'm reluctant to make this thread into a teaching thingy, but a passing thought - if you wanted a model for how to use concrete imagery to deal with abstract subjects, you could do a lot worse than these poems.

[Nanphi]

One of my favourites. And brimming with abstractions!


Spring and Fall: To a Young Child


MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.


"Worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie" -- who else but Hopkins would have written that?

- Nanphi

[romac]

I had to read Hopkins at school, but strangely enough, it didn’t put me off him. I can still quote more lines from him than any other poet, and I enjoy reading his selected poems. Good to see this thread.
My favourite is probably The leaden echo and the golden echo - too long to post here.

Try reading this one aloud!

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 in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats
earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rutpeel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fueled, nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selved 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 indignation! 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.

[SarahJF]

It's almost as if (she says, as if an afternoon of reading Hopkins has somehow made her an expert) he intoxicates you with images, and words, but then just carefully straightens you up when you're on the tip of the point of falling over.

Thank-you ever so much for posting other pieces, Howard M
[SIZE=1]2[/SIZE], Dunc McReil, and Namphi.

I'd always been given the impression that he was some sort of lunatic mystic to be avoided, as if he were bad for one's health. But these poems are rooted in the real world, they just take it on a journey - expose it as being wonderful. Gosh.

Sarah

[CrimpledInside]

I'm bumping this old thread because while preparing a poem for Bicycle Day I discovered "Pied Beauty".
It struck me as delightfully psychedelic. How have I missed Hopkins all these years? (sigh, one more bright light to make my efforts look dim)

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 áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise hím.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

[vmh]

I love Hopkins. God's Grandeur has been one of my favorite poems since I wrote a paper on him in university. Comparing his writing before and after he became a priest. At least that is what I remember it was about. I should dig it out. I wish I could write like him. Poetry so full that it just brims over in sound, in images, in tone. Reading him aloud is just beautiful. The way it feels when it rolls off your tongue and lips. When I say a poem is thick, his are what I think of.
Vicky

ETA: Oh, I didn't see the date on this.

[Lynnpete310]

Harry, thank you for this post. I'd forgotten about Pied Beauty. Sigh.

Hope you like this one. Without this poem, I might never have converted. There is another good one about Mary and May...if you like this one, I'll try and google it up, ok? Lynn


The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.
Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.
So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man’s mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.