Gerard Manley Hopkins

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”

“Spring and Fall: To a Young ChildMárgarét, are you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves, líke the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! ás the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It ís the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.”

“To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.”

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

“Shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.”

“The Best ideal is the true and other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to the holy Three in One.”

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.”

“After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.”

“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.”

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;(from "Spring")”

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.”

“What I do is me, for that I came.”

“No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillionShine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.”

“No, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee”

“But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.”

“All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.”

“The Windhover To Christ our Lord 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! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion. ”

“NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.”

“The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.(from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')”

“What are works of art for? to educate, to be standards. To produce is of little use unless what we produce is known, is widely known, the wider known the better, for it is by being known that it works, it influences, it does its duty, it does good. We must try, then, to be known, aim at it, take means to it. And this without puffing in the process or pride in the success.”

“What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

“I bear a basket lined with grass;I am so light, I am so fair,That men must wonder as I passAnd at the basket that I bear,Where in a newly-drawn green litterSweet flowers I carry, -- sweets for bitter.Lilies I shew you, lilies none,None in Caesar’s gardens blow, --And a quince in hand, -- not oneIs set, because their buds not spring;Spring not, ‘cause world is wintering....”

“As Kingfishers Catch FireAs kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;As tumbled over rim in roundy wellsStones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell'sBow 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_.I say more: the just man justices;Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not hisTo the Father through the features of men's faces.”

“ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.”

“ 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 all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.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.”

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

“And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”