Three Poems by Gerard Manly Hopkins

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 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.

THE WINDOVER

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom 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 ecstasy! 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.

GOD’S GRANDEUR

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
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;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
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;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Another biography (with digitized facsimiles of works and letters)

Sketches+

 

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“The Starlight Night” by Gerard Manly Hopkins (1918)

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!	5
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!	10
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

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Mastering the Art of Reading

I collect library cards like some people collect key chains, shot glasses, or Hard Rock Café memorabilia. Really. I have a Reader’s Card for the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA … the Library of Congress and the Folger in Washington, D.C. … and the British Library in London, England. Of course, I have library cards for every city I’ve ever lived in, from Vallejo, California to Alexandria, Virginia and for every university I’ve ever attended — and some I haven’t.

Library cards are like keys. They open doors to whole new worlds. But like keys, they must be placed in locks, and turned, or they’re practically useless.

The Wheaton Public Library in Wheaton, Illinois is presently issuing keys to interesting doors with their adult summer reading program: “Master the Art of Reading.” The librarians have invited everyone in town to read nine books between June 2nd and August 16th … and be entered in drawings for gift certificates to Borders Books and Music, Cantigny, or the Chicago Art Institute. Needless to say, I jumped on the bandwagon, and I’ve been reading like mad.

I started by borrowing books from my mother. Last Saturday, I went to the Benicia Library book sale here in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area … and bought twelve books. The other night I stayed up until three in the morning to finish a novel … I’ve been known to open a door, walk through it, and never look back. What can I say? Imaginary worlds fascinate me.

These are the worlds that have been fascinating me this summer:

Biography: David Loades, Elizabeth I

Poetry: Langston Hughes, The Dream-Keeper … Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese … Gerard Manly Hopkins, Selected Poems 

Next up (or should I say, next door?): John Reeves, A Book of Hours and Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems

Hopkins says, “It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.”

Fiction: William P. Young, The Shack and John Grisham, The Testament

These two contrast with each other: the first allegorical, the second gritty and realistic. But both present the truth of the saving grace of Jesus. They both intrigued me … because both were about the healing and redemption of the human soul.

At one point when he is speaking to Mack in The Shack, Papa-God says: “A bird’s not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.”

Next door (I think): Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Non-fiction: Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys

Gurian puts in layman’s terms what we knew, as of 1996, about the effects of male biology on the behavior and development of boys from infancy to early adulthood … and suggests how parents, mentors, and teachers can best help boys become strong, wise, powerful men.  I don’t agree with everything in this book, but I do find all of it interesting.  

Next door: Hypoglycemia for Dummies 

Yes, I should have read this one years ago … but I didn’t know the book existed.

Spiritual classics: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God … and Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now

There is nothing like Maya Angelou or a French monk from the 17th century to remind us of things we’ve forgotten … or maybe never thought of before. Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen of his monastery most of his life, and he prayed, “Lord of all pots and pans and things … make me a saint by getting meals and washing up plates!” This prayer is, of course, about being in two worlds at once by being in the presence of God. Brother Lawrence found his key, not in a book, but in the Door!

Sometimes the door before us is invisible, but it is still open.

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