To the |
happy memory
of five Franciscan nuns |
exiles by the Falk Laws |
drowned between midnight and morning of
|
Dec. 7th. 1875 |
PART THE FIRST |
1 |
Thou mastering me |
God! Giver of breath and bread; |
World’s strand, sway of the sea; |
Lord of living and dead; |
Thou hast
bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, |
And after it
almost unmade, what with dread, |
Thy doing : and dost thou touch me afresh? |
Over again I feel thy finger and find
thee.
|
2 |
I did say yes |
O at lightning and lashed rod; |
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess |
Thy terror, O Christ, O God; |
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night: |
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee
trod |
Hard down with a horror of height: |
And the midriff astrain with leaning
of, laced with fire of stress.
|
3 |
The frown of his face |
Before me, the hurtle of hell |
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place? |
I whirled out wings that spell |
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the
Host. |
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell, |
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast, |
To flash from the flame to the flame
then, tower from the grace to the grace.
|
4 |
I am soft sift |
In an hourglass―at
the wall |
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift, |
And it crowds and it combs to the fall; |
I
steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane, |
But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall |
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein |
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a
principle, Christ’s gift.
|
5 |
I kiss my hand |
To the stars, lovely-asunder |
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and |
Glow, glory in thunder; |
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: |
Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and
wonder, |
His mystery must be instressed, stressed; |
For I greet him the days I meet him,
and bless when I understand.
|
6 |
Not out of his bliss |
Springs the stress felt |
Nor first from heaven (and few know this) |
Swings the stroke dealt― |
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver, |
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt― |
But it rides time like riding a river |
(And here the faithful waver, the
faithless fable and miss).
|
7 |
It dates from day |
Of his going in Galilee; |
Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; |
Manger, maiden’s knee; |
The dense and the driven Passion, and
frightful sweat; |
Thence the discharge of it, there its
swelling to be, |
Though felt before, though in high
flood yet― |
What none would have known of it, only
the heart, being hard at bay,
|
8 |
Is out with it! Oh, |
We lash with the best or worst |
Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped
sloe |
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst, |
Gush!
―flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet, |
Brim, in a flash, full!
―Hither then, last or
first, |
To hero of Calvary, Christ’s feet― |
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it,
warned of it―men go.
|
9 |
Be adored among men, |
God, three-numberèd form; |
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den, |
Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm. |
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of
tongue, |
Thou art lightning and love, I found
it, a winter and warm; |
Father and fondler of heart thou hast
wrung: |
Hast thy dark descending and most art
merciful then.
|
10 |
With an anvil-ding |
And with fire in him forge thy will |
Or rather, rather then, stealing as
Spring |
Through him, melt him but master him
still: |
Whether at once, as once at a crash
Paul, |
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet
skill, |
Make mercy in all of us, out of us all |
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored
King.
|
PART THE SECOND |
11 |
‘Some find me a sword; some |
The flange and the rail; flame, |
Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum, |
And storms bugle his fame. |
But wé dream we are rooted in earth―Dust! |
Flesh falls within sight of us, we,
though our flower the same, |
Wave with the meadow, forget that there
must |
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear
share come.
|
12 |
On Saturday sailed from Bremen, |
American-outward-bound, |
Take settler and seamen, tell men with
women, |
Two hundred souls in the round― |
O Father, not under thy feathers nor
ever as guessing |
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the
doom to be drowned; |
Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy
blessing |
Not vault them, the million of rounds
of thy mercy not reeve even them in?
|
13 |
Into the snows she sweeps, |
Hurling the haven behind, |
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the
sky keeps, |
For the infinite air is unkind, |
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed
in the regular blow, |
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed
quarter, the wind; |
Wiry and white-fiery and
whirlwind-swivellèd snow |
Spins to the widow-making unchilding
unfathering deeps.
|
14 |
She drove in the dark to leeward, |
She struck―not
a reef or a rock |
But the combs of a smother of sand:
night drew her |
Dead to the Kentish Knock; |
And she beat the bank down with her
bows and the ride of her keel: |
The breakers rolled on her beam with
ruinous shock; |
And canvas and compass, the whorl and
the wheel |
Idle for ever to waft her or wind her
with, these she endured.
|
15 |
Hope had grown grey hairs, |
Hope had mourning on, |
Trenched with tears, carved with cares, |
Hope was twelve hours gone; |
And frightful a nightfall folded rueful
a day |
Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship,
shone, |
And lives at last were washing away: |
To the shrouds they took, ―they shook
in the hurling and horrible airs.
|
16 |
One stirred from the rigging to save |
The wild woman-kind below, |
With a rope’s end round the man, handy
and brave― |
He was pitched to his death at a blow, |
For all his dreadnought breast and
braids of thew: |
They could tell him for hours, dandled
the to and fro |
Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what
could he do |
With the burl of the fountains of air,
buck and the flood of the wave?
|
17 |
They fought with God’s cold― |
And they could not and fell to the deck |
(Crushed them) or water (and drowned
them) or rolled |
With the sea-romp over the wreck. |
Night roared, with the heart-break
hearing a heart-broke rabble, |
The woman’s wailing, the crying of
child without check― |
Till a lioness arose breasting the
babble, |
A prophetess towered in the tumult, a
virginal tongue told.
|
18 |
Ah, Touched in your bower of bone, |
Are you! Turned for an exquisite smart, |
Have you! make words break from me here
all alone, |
Do you!
―mother of being in me, heart. |
O unteachably after evil, but uttering
truth, |
Why, tears! is it? tears; such a
melting, a madrigal start! |
Never-eldering revel and river of
youth, |
What can it be, this glee? the good you
have there of your own?
|
19 |
Sister, a sister calling |
A master, her master and mine!― |
And the inboard seas run swirling and
hawling; |
The rash smart sloggering brine |
Blinds her; but she that weather sees
one thing, one; |
Has one fetch in her: she rears herself
to divine |
Ears, and the call of the tall nun |
To the men in the tops and the tackle
rode over the storm’s brawling.
|
20 |
She was first of a five and came |
Of a coifèd sisterhood. |
(O Deutschland, double a desperate
name! |
O world wide of its good! |
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two
of a town, |
Christ’s lily and beast of the waste
wood: |
From life’s dawn it is drawn down, |
Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they
have sucked the same.)
|
21 |
Loathed for a love men knew in them, |
Banned by the land of their birth, |
Rhine refused them, Thames would ruin
them; |
Surf, snow, river and earth |
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion
of light; |
Thy unchancelling poising palms were
weighing the worth, |
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight |
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved
flowers, lily showers―sweet
heaven was astrew in them.
|
22 |
Five!
the finding and sake |
And cipher of suffering Christ. |
Mark, the mark is of man’s make |
And the word of it Sacrificed. |
But he scores it in scarlet himself on
his own bespoken, |
Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and
priced― |
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token |
For lettering of the lamb’s fleece,
ruddying of the rose-flake.
|
23 |
Joy fall to thee, father Francis, |
Drawn to the Life that died; |
With the gnarls of the nails in thee,
niche of the lance, his |
Lovescape crucifed |
And seal of his seraph-arrival! and
these thy daughters |
And five-livèd and leavèd favour and
pride, |
Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, |
To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to
breathe in his all-fire glances.
|
24 |
Away in the loveable west, |
On a pastoral forehead of Wales, |
I was under a roof here, I was at rest, |
And they the prey of the gales; |
She to the black-about air, to the
breaker, the thickly |
Falling flakes, to the throng that
catches and quails |
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come
quickly’: |
The cross to her she calls Christ to
her, christens her wild-worst Best.
|
25 |
The majesty! what did she mean? |
Breathe, arch and original Breath. |
Is it love in her of the being as her
lover had been? |
Breathe, body of lovely Death. |
They were else-minded then, altogether,
the men |
Woke thee with a we are perishing
in the weather of Gennesareth. |
Or is it that she cried for the crown
then, |
The keener to come at the comfort for
feeling the combating keen?
|
26 |
For how to the heart’s cheering |
The down-dugged ground-hugged grey |
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens
appearing |
Of pied and peeled May! |
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or
night, still higher, |
With belled fire and the moth-soft
Milky Way, |
What by your measure is the heaven of
desire, |
The treasure never eyesight got, nor
was ever guessed what for the hearing?
|
27 |
No, but it was not these. |
The jading and jar of the cart, |
Time’s tasking, it is fathers that
asking for ease |
Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart, |
Not danger, electrical horror; then
further it finds |
The appealing of the Passion is
tenderer in prayer apart: |
Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s |
Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of
endragonèd seas.
|
28 |
But how shall I . . . make me room
there: |
Reach me a . . . Fancy, come faster― |
Strike you the sight of it? look at it
loom there, |
Thing that she . . . there then!
the
Master, |
Ipse, the only one, Christ,
King, Head: |
He was to cure the extremity where he
had cast her; |
Do, deal, lord it with living and dead; |
Let him ride, her pride, in his
triumph, despatch and have done with his doom there.
|
29 |
Ah! there was a heart right! |
There was single eye! |
Read the unshapeable shock night |
And knew the who and the why; |
Wording it how but by him that present
and past, |
Heaven and earth are word of, worded
by? ― |
The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast
|
Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of
light.
|
30 |
Jesu, heart’s light, |
Jesu, maid’s son, |
What was the feast followed the night |
Thou hadst glory of this nun? ― |
Feast of the one woman without stain. |
For so conceivèd, so to conceive thee
is done; |
But here was heart-throe, birth of a
brain, |
Word, that heard and kept thee and
uttered thee outright.
|
31 |
Well, she has thee for the pain, for
the |
Patience; but pity of the rest of them! |
Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein
for the |
Comfortless unconfessed of them― |
No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous
Providence |
Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery
delicacy, the breast of the |
Maiden could obey so, be a bell to,
ring of it, and |
Startle the poor sheep back! is the
shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain
for thee?
|
32 |
I admire thee, master of the tides, |
Of the Yore-flood, of the year’s fall; |
The recurb and the recovery of the
gulf’s sides, |
The girth of it and the wharf of it and
the wall; |
Stanching, quenching ocean of a
motionable mind; |
Ground of being, and granite of it:
past all |
Grasp God, throned behind |
Death with a sovereignty that heeds but
hides, bodes but abides.
|
33 |
With a mercy that outrides |
The all of water, an ark |
For the listener; for the lingerer with
a love glides |
Lower than death and the dark; |
A vein for the visiting of the
past-prayer, pent in prison, |
The-last-breath penitent spirits―the
uttermost mark |
Our passion-plungèd giant risen, |
The Christ of the Father compassionate,
fetched in the storm of his strides.
|
34 |
Now burn, new born to the world, |
Double-naturèd name, |
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed,
maiden-furled |
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, |
Mid-numberèd He in three of the
thunder-throne! |
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming
nor dark as he came; |
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; |
A released shower, let flash to the
shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.
|
35 |
Dame, at our door |
Drowned, and among the shoals, |
Remember us in the roads, the
heaven-haven of the Reward: |
Our King back, oh, upon English souls! |
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to
the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, |
More brightening her, rare-dear
Britain, as his reign rolls, |
Pride, rose, prince, hero of us,
high-priest, |
Our heart’s charity’s hearth’s fire,
our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord.
|
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 ] |