Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry

 

G e r a r d   M a n l e y   H o p k i n s
(1844-1889)

The Lantern out of Doors
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
   That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
   I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
   In mould or mind or 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.

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.

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.
 

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