Tuesday, February 1, 2022
To a Beautiful Child*
Saturday, January 1, 2022
Looking Backwards & Forwards at Hopkins
For this new year, I'm reviewing for you all the Gerard Manley Hopkins entries on this blog. There are works by Hopkins himself, plus references to his work. Hopkins was a 19th century English Jesuit poet. He both modernized and stuck with old forms in his work. Enjoy, and Happy 2021!
"God's Grandeur" [2nd best known]
"My Own Heart Let Me Have More Pity On"
Excerpt from "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection."
"Moonless Darkness Stands Between" [Christmas]
"He Hath Abolished the Old Drouth"
Here is Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, reading "God's Grandeur":
Here's an original poem of mine, drawing from a line in God's Grandeur":
This is by a poetess who really admired Hopkins:
Here's a portrait of Hopkins, done in "icon" style:
Chokecherries, White Mountains of Arizona October 2021 |
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Posh Hopkins
Here is Prince Charles reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' second most famous poem, "God's Grandeur."
"God's Grandeur" Prince Charles 2021 Easter Message
Here is the text for this poem, with explanatory notes, from an earlier post in this blog:
This is not a strong "resurrection poem"; Hopkins did write some Easter specific poems. If you click the "Easter" link, you will pull some up. But at least it does mention "the Holy Ghost." At one time, Charles seemed to be drifting away from Christian-specific matters, but that does not seem to be the case anymore.
I imagine Charles chose this, partly, because of the environmental theme. I also wonder if, as Prince of Wales, he did it for the Welsh connection. Hopkins was an English Jesuit priest, but his most favorite place of serving was Wales. He learned some Welsh. (For a poetry day event several years ago, the Prince of Wales read a poem by the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.)
Just for "fun", here is a poem I wrote as a "riff" off of a line in "God's Grandeur."
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Jesus, Refuge of the Weary
Jesus, Refuge of the weary,
Blest Redeemer Whom we love.
Fountain in life's desert dreary,
Savior from the world above.
Oh, how oft Thine eyes, offended
Gaze upon the sinner's fall;
Yet upon the cross extended,
You have born the pain of all.
Breathing no repentant vow,
Though we see Thee wounded, bleeding,
See Thy thorn encircled brow?
Yet Thy sinless death has brought us
Life eternal, peace, and rest;
Only what your grace has taught us
Calms the sinner’s deep distress.
With more fervent love for Thee;
May our eyes be ever turning
To Thy cross of agony
Till in glory, parted never
From the blessed Savior’s side,
Carved into our hearts forever,
Dwell the cross, the Crucified.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
From St Patrick
Friday, March 4, 2016
Salve Feste Dies
Refrain: Hail thee, festival day!
Blest day that art hallowed forever;
day wherein Christ arose,
breaking the kingdom of death.
Lo, the fair beauty of earth,
From the death of the winter arising,
Every good gift of the year
Now with its Master returns. Refrain
He who was nailed to the Cross
Is God and the Ruler of all things;
All things created on earth
Worship the Maker of all. Refrain
God of all pity and power,
Let Your word assure those who doubt;
Light on the third day returns:
Rise, Son of God, from the tomb! Refrain
Rise now, O Lord, from the grave
And cast off the shroud that enwrapped You;
You are all that we need:
Nothing without You exists. Refrain
They mourned as they laid You to rest,
O, Author of life and creation;
Treading the pathway of death,
You give life to us creations. Refrain
Show us Your Face once more,
That we may enjoy Your brightness;
Give us the light of day,
Darkened on earth at thy Death. * Refrain
Jesus has harrowed hell;
He has led captivity captive;
Darkness and chaos and death
Flee from the Face of the Light. Refrain
*The Sun was darkened ("obscured") from the "sixth to the ninth hours" (~ noon to ~ 3 PM) on the Friday Jesus was crucified.
--Venantius Fortunatus (530-609);
trans. Fr. Maurice Frederick Bell (Anglican), 1906, adapted cmb
Friday, May 1, 2015
A Song of Spring
The Spring comes slowly up this way,
Slowly, slowly,
Under a snood* of hodden** grey.
The black and white for her array,
Slowly, slowly,***
The Spring comes slowly up this way.
Where is her green that was so gay?
Slowly, slowly,
The Spring comes slowly up this way.
Unto a world too sick for May,
Slowly, slowly,
The Spring comes slowly up this way.
Where are the lads that used to play?
Slowly, slowly,
The Spring comes slowly up this way.
She has no heart for holiday,
Slowly, slowly,
The Spring comes slowly up this way.
The trees are out in Heaven they say^.
Slowly, slowly,
The Spring comes slowly up our way.
---- Katherine Tynan***8; 1859-1931
*Snood: a mesh, cloth or yarn bag used for gathering up a woman's hair, especially a long mass of hair. (Often had the idea of keeping a woman's sexuality "hidden" or "protected." Here the author suggest that spring is too long hidden.)
**Hodden: coarse cloth worn by the peasants of Scotland. Hodden Grey was known for being worn by certain military regiments
***This poem is a bit somber, sober, even "down" for a spring poem. It reflects life in a more northern climate. Also, it reflects some the "zeitgeist" of our current times: seeing so many challenging things on so many fronts, waiting, hoping; waiting, ultimately, for Christ to return.
^A picture of the new life in heaven.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
He hath abolished the old drouth
And rivers run where all was dry**,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew.
He hath put a new song in my mouth,
The words are old, the purport new*,
And taught my lips to quote this word
That I shall live, I shall not die,
But I shall when the shocks are stored
See the salvation of the Lord.
We meet together, you and I,
Meet in one acre of one land,
And I will turn my looks to you,
And you shall meet me with reply,
We shall be sheaved with one band
Van Gough |
In harvest and in garnering,
When heavenly vales so thick shall stand
With corn*** that they shall laugh and sing.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins
* “the words are old, the purport new” Psalm 118:17: “I shall not die, but live.” This is the “new song" Psalm 40:3.
**Psalm, 65, Running rivers and the fields sopping with water
***Biblical "corn" is actually "wheat"
Saturday, May 11, 2013
May Magnificat*
May is Mary's month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above bird 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 saw, 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-surfed 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.
[edited for prominent Roman Catholic Marian theology; cmb, 2013]
*Mary's song during her pregnancy with Christ: "My soul magnifies the Lord..."
**Rose & Blue are traditionally "Mary's colors." Blue for faithfulness & Rose for femininity, motherhood & the color of the fresh, pure rose.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Deer's Cry
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Moonless darkness stands between
Monday, October 25, 2010
Pied Beauty (Redux)
Always nice to repeat some of Hopkins work:
Glory be to God for dappled things,For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow,
For rose-moles 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, spare, original, 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.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
*Pied: Having patches of more than one color; i.e. the "Pied Piper"
**Rose-colored dots or flecks
***Fallen chestnuts, red as burning coals
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
My Own Heart Let Me Have More Pity On
(Forgiveness in Christ brings joy; but sometimes a tender conscience is hard on a person for a period of time. Hopkins experienced a period of what appears to be depression in connection with this.)
My own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to see my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By going round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find*
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Would, self; come, poor Jackself*, I do advise
You, jaded, let be;*** call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile****
's bit wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather---as skies
Betweenpie mountains---lights a lovely mile.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1885
*The poet is "groping around" in the manner of a blind man, searching for comfort that eludes him
**Hopkins often used "Jack" as a stand in for "anyone", the "man on the street", himself
***"Let it go", in modern language; he's telling his soul this hanging on to jadedness & sad thougts needs to go
****No, the poet doesn't really believe that God (the Father) has a physical smile; it's figurative, and he's comparing it to the "dappled" bright "U" of sky in the saddle between two dark mountains
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Music on the Wing*
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,
And know infallibly which I preferred.
The authentic cadence was discovered late
Which ends those only strains that I approve,
and other science all gone out of date
And minor sweetness scarce made mention of;
I have found the dominant of my range*** and state--
Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and Love.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1865
*Originally untitled
**The bats circling to depart at sunset ("half-light")
***The author found his "true singing voice" late, or so he says. His "range" (literally, how low & high one can sing) is all wrapped up in Love for God. (This love can come only as a response to knowing that Christ has died for our sins.)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Change & the Comfort of the Resurrection
...Vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection
A heart's clarion (2)! Away grief's grasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck (3) shone
A beacon, and eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash (1):
In a flash, at a trumpet crash (4)
I am all at once what Christ is, since He was what I am, and
this Jack(5), joke poor potsherd, patch(6), matchwood, immortal diamond
Is immortal diamond.(7)
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1888
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
(1) Heraclitus [(c) 535-(c) 475 B.C.); Greek philosopher who taught that the basis of all existence was change or "fire." "Strife" changes fire into water, water into earth, and then the process reversed. Hopkins didn't truly believe this philosophy but used it to symbolize the change of the corrupted nature and of the corrupting body in the grave into something immortal & beautiful (Diamonds also come out of the earth & are processed by fire.)
(2) Clarion--a clear, trumpet-like, beckoning call
(3) Foundering deck: shipwreck as a symbol of death. (Again, the "water.")
(4) Trumpet: borrowed directly from II Corinthians 15:25.
(5) "Jack": common fellow; this name was well-used in England.
(6) Patch (archaic): fool, ninny; also, a detached piece, a make-shift fragment, such as the potsherd Job used to scrape his sores (Job 2:8)
(7) "Immortal Diamond": Hopkins, as a Roman Catholic, believed that people carried the "scintilla", the spark of original good, within themselves, even after Sin entered the world. As a Lutheran, I take the immortal diamond, already there alongside the corrupt things, to be the new person that is created in Christ when the person is saved. (The term "immortal diamond" has also been used as a title for Hopkins himself.)
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Holy God, We Praise Your Name
Holy God, we praise Your Name;
Lord of all, we bow before You!
All on earth Your scepter claim*,
All in Heaven above adore You;
Infinite Your vast domain,
Everlasting is Your reign.
Hark! the loud celestial hymn
Angel choirs above are raising,
Cherubim and seraphim,
In unceasing chorus praising;
Fill the heavens with sweet accord:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord.
Lo! the apostolic train
Join the sacred Name to hallow;
Prophets swell the loud refrain,
And the white robed martyrs** follow;
And from morn to set of sun,
Through the Church the song goes on.
You are King of glory, Christ:
Son of God, yet born of Mary;
For us sinners sacrificed,
Bringing us a sanctuary:
First to break the bars of death,
You have opened Heaven to faith.
Therefore do we pray You, Lord:
Help Your servants whom, redeeming
By Your precious blood out-poured,
You have saved from Satan’s scheming.
Give to them eternal rest
In the glory of the blest.
Spare Your people, Lord, we pray,
By a thousand snares surrounded:
Keep us from falling away,
Never let us be confounded.
See, I put my trust in You:
Guide my footsteps in all that I do.
Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit,
Three we name You;
While in essence only One,
Undivided God we claim You;
And adoring bend the knee,
While we own the mystery.
---Ignaz Franz (German), 1774; adapted Marie Byars, 2008
*more specifically, all of nature & all the saved acknowledge Him willingly now; someday, everyone will be made to acknowledge Him
**"martyrs": those who died as a result of their faith, giving a powerful Christian witness. ("Martyros" in Greek originally meant "witness.")
Monday, May 19, 2008
The Starlight Night
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs*, the circle-citadels* there!
Down in the dim woods the diamond delves**! the elves' eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold*** lies!...
Ah, well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.****
---from Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
*city images, as if the constellations were fortified cities
**the diamond-like stars dive down to the "land of elves"; (Hopkins nor I really believe in elves--it's just a fanciful & joyful flight of poetic symbolism)
***the light of the heavenly bodies is like "free gold" to anyone who takes the trouble to take it in, but it's gold in motion---it won't be there forever
****the prize comes from the purchase made by Jesus Christ; He died for your sins so all this, too, can be yours, along with the forgiveness and life you have in Him
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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 rise and wring
The ear, it strides 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 limbs, 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***
Innocent mind and Mayday**** in girl and boy,
Most, O Maid's Child*****,
Thy choice and worth the winning.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, may 1877
*Eggs the color of the sky & reminders of it
**Thrush: the songbird, not the yeast-related infection (ha, ha!!)
***Cloy: to satiate, us. w/something pleasing. Basically, hurry to enjoy this fleeting reminder of Eden before it is spoiled, as the first Eden was by sin
****Mayday: May 1st. Celebrated in Europe with flowers & folk dances. (Happy Mayday! Also, Blessed Ascension. This year, the day commemorating Jesus's bodily Ascension through the clouds, after which we could no longer see Him physically, is also May 1st.)
*****Maid's Child: The Virgin's Son, Jesus. (Roman Catholics devote all of May to Mary.) This suggests that Jesus would choose the "innocent" boys & girls more than anyone else. Actually, no one's innocent & God loves all us rotten sinners just the same.