Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise

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 eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a

Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cheery Beggar

Beyond Mágdalen 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;

. . . . . . . .

The motion of that man’s heart is fine

Whom want could not make píne, píne

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! —

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Felix Randal

Félix Rándal the fárrier, O is he déad then? my dúty all énded,

Who have watched his mould of man, bigboned 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 all; though a heavenlier heart began some

Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom

Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

At The Wedding March

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.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To R B

The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong

Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,

Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,

Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.

Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long

Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:

The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim

Now known and hand at work now never wrong.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Carrion Comfort

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man

In me {'o}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

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruis{`e}d bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avo{'i}d thee and

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As king fishers 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 itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur

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 toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Binsey Poplars

(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 swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering

by Gerard Manley Hopkins