As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

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.
I 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 | Classic Poems
 

[ The Sea and the Skylark ] [ Windhover ] [ Spring ] [ Hurrahing in Harvest ] [ God's Grandeur ] [ The Wreck of the Deutschland ] [ The Caged Skylark ] [ Moonrise ] [ Inversnaid ] [ Pied Beauty ] [ as kingfishers catch fire ] [ In The Valley of the Elwy ] [ The May Magnificat ]
 
 
 
 
 

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