NAPOMO: Gerard Manley Hopkins

[tree_and_leaf]

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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins. I do love this poem.

Comments

[sashajwolf]

This is one of my favourites, too. Hopkins' poems were one of my set texts for A-level, and I loved them immediately - much to the surprise of my father, who could never get the hang of them despite being an English teacher and generally quite into poetry. I actually remember it as one of those defining moments that marked our transition to a relationship of independent equals.

[tree_and_leaf]

I loved the sound Hopkins makes before I really understood them (I did have a children's book of verse that included Inversnaid and, rather more surprisingly, 'The Windhover'. They obviously had intellectually tough children in mind!

[cheyinka]

This is one of the poems I occasionally inflicted on those who read my other journals, because I like it so much. I like the way the words feel when I read it out loud - it's one of the few poems I've managed to memorize, probably because when I first encountered it I kept reading it to myself every so often just because it was neat.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's intensely memorable - actually, Hopkins tends to be!

[aunty_marion]

That one and 'Pied Beauty' are a couple of the most wonderful collections of 'the best words in the best order' I can think of.

[tree_and_leaf]

When Hopkins is on form, he's one of the best poets in the English language.

[sir_guinglain]

I thought that I had asked this earlier, but evidently failed to post the comment - what did Hopkins intend regarding the diacritical marks? Are they stresses, and what do they echo? Presumably something religious.

[tree_and_leaf]

They're stress marks to help you to scan Hopkins' admittedly rather peculiar metre, and used when the scansion is ambiguous. Nothing to do with religious symbolism, for once!

[sir_guinglain]

The fact I didn't find Hopkins's metre at all unusual is no doubt a sign of my lack of a sense of rhythm, my modernist leanings, and that I need to re-learn all the technical knowledge I once had of poetry, and more.

[tree_and_leaf]

Very few people do know anything about rhythm or prosody these days, which is a pity, because it's one of the pleasures of poetry. I don't know much myself, but at least I know where I'm ignorant!