An attentive reader has just brought to my attention that today is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 165th birthday. In honor of the occasion, I want to share one of my favorite fragments from his works:
Thee, God, I come from, to thee go,
All day long I like fountain flow
From thy hand out, swayed about
Mote-like in thy mighty glow.What I know of thee I bless,
As acknowledging thy stress
On my being and as seeing
Something of thy holiness.Once I turned from thee and hid,
Bound on what thou hadst forbid;
Sow the wind I would; I sinned:
I repent of what I did.
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Eric 07.28.09 at 12:42 pm
These passages are worth a very long time of prayer for each. I have not read much Hopkins and am thinking that he needs to go on my “To Read” list.
My strongest connection to Hopkins came when I found that the very open-minded Anglicans have a monument to him in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Michelle 07.28.09 at 7:09 pm
Eric,
Do put Hopkins on the “To Read” and “To Pray” list. I first discovered Hopkins in the poetry section tucked into the back of my breviary (I was using poetry in place of the hymn in private recitation). Bits tend to float through…
One favorite (from Pied Beauty):
All things counter, original, spare, 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.
A Hopkins starter list:
Pied Beauty
God’s Grandeur
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief.
Ribblesdale