God's Grandeur / Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

 "God's Grandeur" read by Charles III. Courtesy The Royal Family..

Hurrahing in Harvest / Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
   Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
   Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
   Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
   And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
   Majestic — as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
   Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
   And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"Hurrahing in Harvest" read by Jonathan Roumie. Courtesy World on Fire Institute.

The Starlight Night / Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Starlight Night

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!
   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!
   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.

---
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), 1877
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"The Starlight Night" read by The Wordman. Courtesy PoemRecital.

Spring / Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.

~~

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"Spring" read by The Wordman. Courtesy PoemRecital.

The May Magnificat / Gerard Manley Hopkins

 
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 greenworld 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 ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth
    To remember and exultation
    In God who was her salvation.

~~

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"The May Magnificat" read by Jonathan Roumie. Courtesy Word on Fire Institute.