Andromeda poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude, With not her either beauty’s equal or Her injury’s, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon’s food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes; but now hears roar A wilder beast from West […]

My prayers must meet a brazen heaven poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

My prayers must meet a brazen heaven And fail and scatter all away. Unclean and seeming unforgiven My prayers I scarcely call to pray. I cannot buoy my heart above; Above I cannot entrance win. I reckon precedents of love, But feel the long success of sin. My heaven is brass and iron […]

Morning Midday And Evening Sacrifice poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

The dappled die-away Cheek and wimpled lip, The gold-wisp, the airy-grey Eye, all in fellowship— This, all this beauty blooming, This, all this freshness fuming, Give God while worth consuming. Both thought and thew now bolder And told by Nature: Tower; Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder That beat and breathe in power— […]

Moonrise poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark […]

Moonless darkness stands between poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Moonless darkness stands between. Past, the Past, no more be seen! But the Bethlehem-star may lead me To the sight of Him Who freed me From the self that I have been. Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy; Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly; Now beginning, and alway: Now begin, on Christmas […]

May Magnificat poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

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? […]

Love Preparing to Fly poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

He play’d his wings as tho’ for flight; They webb’d the sky with glassy light. His body sway’d upon tiptoes, Like a wind-perplexed rose; In eddies of the wind he went At last up the blue element.     *** Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems by Gerard Manley […]

Let me be to Thee as the circling bird poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Let me be to Thee as the circling bird, Or bat with tender and air-crisping wings That shapes in half-light his departing rings, From both of whom a changeless note is heard. I have found my music in a common word, Trying each pleasurable throat that sings And every praised sequence of sweet strings, […]

Inversnaid poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with […]

In The Valley Of The Elwy poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

I remember a house where all were good To me, God knows, deserving no such thing: Comforting smell breathed at very entering, Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood. That cordial air made those kind people a hood All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing Will, or mild nights […]

In Honour Of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

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 […]

Hurrahing In Harvest poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise 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, […]

Hope Holds to Christ poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

. . . . . . . . Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more. It will not well, so she would bring about An ever brighter burnish than before And turns to wash it from her welling eyes And breathes the blots off […]

Henry Purcell poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man’s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally. Have, fair fallen, […]

Harry Ploughman poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Hard as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flue Breathed round; the rack of ribs; the scooped flank; lank Rope-over thigh; knee-nave; and barrelled shank— Head and foot, shoulder and shank— By a grey eye’s heed steered well, one crew, fall to; Stand at stress. Each limb’s barrowy brawn, his thew That onewhere […]

God’s Grandeur poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

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 […]

For A Picture Of St. Dorothea poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

I bear a basket lined with grass; I am so light, I am so fair, That men must wonder as I pass And at the basket that I bear, Where in a newly-drawn green litter Sweet flowers I carry, — sweets for bitter. Lilies I shew you, lilies none, None in Caesar’s gardens […]

Felix Randal poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended, Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended? Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and […]

Epithalamion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood, Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave, That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between Roots and rocks […]

Easter Communion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast: God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips. You striped in secret with breath-taking whips, Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced To crosses meant for Jesu’s; you whom the East With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, You […]

Duns Scotus’s Oxford poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded; The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers; Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural rural […]

Denis poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Denis, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit Caps occasion with an intellectual fit. Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber ’ll hit The bald and b?ld bl?nking gold when ?ll ’s d?ne Right rooting in the bare butt’s wincing navel in the sight of the sun. . . . . . . . […]

Cheery Beggar poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Beyond M?gdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain, In Summer, in a burst of summertime Following falls and falls of rain, When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime; . . . . . . . . […]

Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ?r, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me […]

Brothers poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

How lovely the elder brother’s Life all laced in the other’s, Lóve-laced!—what once I well Witnessed; so fortune fell. When Shrovetide, two years gone, Our boys’ plays brought on Part was picked for John, Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy Ran revel in the elder boy. Their night was come now; all Our company […]

Binsey Poplars poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

felled 1879 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all felled; Of a fresh and following folded rank Not spared, not one That dandled a sandalled Shadow that swam or sank On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. O if […]

Barnfloor and Winepress poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

And he said, If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 2 Kings VI: 27 Thou that on sin’s wages starvest, Behold we have the joy in harvest: For us was gather’d the first fruits, For us was lifted from […]

At The Wedding March poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

God with honour hang your head, Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed With lissome scions, sweet scions, Out of hallowed bodies bred. Each be other’s comfort kind: Déep, déeper than divined, Divine charity, dear charity, Fast you ever, fast bind. Then let the March tread our ears: I to him turn with […]

Ash-Boughs poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

a. Not of all my eyes see, wandering on the world, Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky. Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled Fast ?r they in clammyish lashtender combs creep […]

As Kingfishers Catch Fire poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 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 […]

Andromeda poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude, With not her either beauty’s equal or Her injury’s, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon’s food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes; but now hears roar A wilder beast from West […]

You Ask Me, Why, Tho’ Ill at Ease poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems

You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will; A land […]

Ulysses poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times […]