Laybrother of the Society of Jesus
Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
***
Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the most important poets of the Victorian era. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he served as a Jesuit priest and is remembered for his innovative and interesting verse. Most of his work was unpublished, hence unknown and unappreciated, in his own lifetime, so the literary fame came to Hopkins posthumously.