33_Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published

Produced by Lewis Jones

Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1918) "Poems"

_Poems_

Gerard Manley Hopkins

now first published

Edited with notes

ROBERT BRIDGES

Poet Laureate

LONDON

HUMPHREY MILFORD

_CATHARINAE_

HVNC LIBRVM

QVI FILA EIVS CARISSIMI

POETAE DEBITAM INGENIO LAVDEM EXPECTANTIS

SERVM TAMEN MONVMENTVM ESSET

ANNVM AETATIS XCVIII AGENTI

VETERIS AMICITIAE PIGNVS

D D D

_R B_

Transcriber's notes: The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins contain

unconventional English, accents and horizontal lines. Facsimile

images of the poems as originally published are freely available

online from the Internet Archive. Please use these images to

check for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.

The editor's endnotes refer to the page numbers of the

Author's _Preface_ and to the first page of the _Early Poems_.

I have therefore inserted these page numbers in round brackets:

(1), (2), etc. up to (7). For pages 1 to 7 the line numbers in

this electronic version are the same as those referred to in the

editor's endnotes.

After page 7 this text mainly follows the editor's endnotes

which, apart from the occasional page reference, refer to the

poems by their numbers. For example:

5. PENMAEN POOL.

In poem _26_ I have retained the larger than normal spacing

between the first and second words of the eighth line.

In poem _36_ I have rendered the first word of line 28 as "Óne."

In the original the accent falls on the second letter but I did

not have a text character to record this accurately.

The editor's notes contain one word and, later, one phrase from

the ancient Greek; these are retained but the Greek letters have

been Englished.

CONTENTS

Author's Preface

Early Poems

Poems 1876-1889

Unfinished Poems & Fragments

EDITORIAL

Preface to Notes

Notes

OUR generation already is overpast,

And thy lov'd legacy, Gerard, hath lain

Coy in my home; as once thy heart was fain

Of shelter, when God's terror held thee fast

In life's wild wood at Beauty and Sorrow aghast;

Thy sainted sense tramme'd in ghostly pain,

Thy rare ill-broker'd talent in disdain:

Yet love of Christ will win man's love at last.

Hell wars without; but, dear, the while my hands

Gather'd thy book, I heard, this wintry day,

Thy spirit thank me, in his young delight

Stepping again upon the yellow sands.

Go forth: amidst our chaffinch flock display

Thy plumage of far wonder and heavenward flight!

Chilswell, Jan. 1918.

(1) AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE poems in this book* (*That is, the MS.

described in Editor's preface as B. This

preface does not apply to the early poems.)

are written some in Running Rhythm, the common

rhythm in English use, some in Sprung Rhythm,

and some in a mixture of the two. And those in

the common rhythm are some counterpointed,

some not.

Common English rhythm, called Running Rhythm

above, is measured by feet of either two or three

syllables and (putting aside the imperfect feet at the

beginning and end of lines and also some unusual

measures, in which feet seem to be paired together and

double or composite feet to arise) never more or less.

Every foot has one principal stress or accent, and

this or the syllable it falls on may be called the Stress

of the foot and the other part, the one or two unaccented

syllables, the Slack. Feet (and the rhythms made out

of them) in which the stress comes first are called

Falling Feet and Falling Rhythms, feet and rhythm

in which the slack comes first are called Rising Feet

and Rhythms, and if the stress is between two slacks

there will be Rocking Feet and Rhythms. These

distinctions are real and true to nature; but for purposes

of scanning it is a great convenience to follow the

(2) example of music and take the stress always first, as

the accent or the chief accent always comes first in

a musical bar. If this is done there will be in common

English verse only two possible feet--the so-called

accentual Trochee and Dactyl, and correspondingly

only two possible uniform rhythms, the so-called

Trochaic and Dactylic. But they may be mixed and then

what the Greeks called a Logaoedic Rhythm arises.

These are the facts and according to these the scanning

of ordinary regularly-written English verse is very

simple indeed and to bring in other principles is here

unnecessary.

But because verse written strictly in these feet and

by these principles will become same and tame the

poets have brought in licences and departures from

rule to give variety, and especially when the natural

rhythm is rising, as in the common ten-syllable or

five-foot verse, rhymed or blank. These irregularities

are chiefly Reversed Feet and Reversed or Counterpoint

Rhythm, which two things are two steps or degrees

of licence in the same kind. By a reversed foot

I mean the putting the stress where, to judge by

the rest of the measure, the slack should be and the

slack where the stress, and this is done freely at the

beginning of a line and, in the course of a line, after

a pause; only scarcely ever in the second foot or

place and never in the last, unless when the poet

designs some extraordinary effect; for these places are

characteristic and sensitive and cannot well be touched.

But the reversal of the first foot and of some middle

(3) foot after a strong pause is a thing so natural that

our poets have generally done it, from Chaucer down,

without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed and

cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm,

but rather is that irregularity which all natural growth

and motion shews. If however the reversal is repeated

in two feet running, especially so as to include the

sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great

want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the super-

inducing or mounting of a new rhythm upon the old;

and since the new or mounted rhythm is actually heard

and at the same time the mind naturally supplies the

natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do not

forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be

hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at

once and we have something answerable to counter-

point in music, which is two or more strains of tune

going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm.

Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and

the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_ are written throughout

in it--but with the disadvantage that he does not let

the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is

meant to be and so they have struck most readers as

merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint

throughout, since one only of the counter rhythms is

actually heard, the other is really destroyed or cannot

come to exist, and what is written is one rhythm only

and probably Sprung Rhythm, of which I now speak.

Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured

by feet of from one to four syllables, regularly, and for

(4) particular effects any number of weak or slack syllables

may be used. It has one stress, which falls on the

only syllable, if there is only one, or, if there are more,

then scanning as above, on the first, and so gives rise to

four sorts of feet, a monosyllable and the so-called

accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the First Paeon. And

there will be four corresponding natural rhythms; but

nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow

any other. And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from

Running Rhythm in having or being only one nominal

rhythm, a mixed or 'logaoedic' one, instead of three,

but on the other hand in having twice the flexibility of

foot, so that any two stresses may either follow one

another running or be divided by one, two, or three

slack syllables. But strict Sprung Rhythm cannot be

counterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic

rhythm generally, the feet are assumed to be equally

long or strong and their seeming inequality is made up

by pause or stressing.

Remark also that it is natural in Sprung Rhythm for

the lines to be _rove over_, that is for the scanning of

each line immediately to take up that of the one before,

so that if the first has one or more syllables at its end

the other must have so many the less at its beginning;

and in fact the scanning runs on without break from

the beginning, say, of a stanza to the end and all the

stanza is one long strain, though written in lines asunder.

Two licences are natural to Sprung Rhythm. The

one is rests, as in music; but of this an example is

scarcely to be found in this book, unless in the _Echos_,

(5) second line. The other is _hangers_ or _outrides_ that

is one, two, or three slack syllables added to a foot and

not counting in the nominal scanning. They are so

called because they seem to hang below the line or

ride forward or backward from it in another dimension

than the line itself, according to a principle needless to

explain here. These outriding half feet or hangers are

marked by a loop underneath them, and plenty of them

will be found.

The other marks are easily understood, namely

accents, where the reader might be in doubt which

syllable should have the stress; slurs, that is loops

_over_ syllables, to tie them together into the time of

one; little loops at the end of a line to shew that the

rhyme goes on to the first letter of the next line;

what in music are called pauses, to shew that the

syllable should be dwelt on; and twirls, to mark

reversed or counterpointed rhythm.

Note on the nature and history of Sprung Rhythm--

Sprung Rhythm is the most natural of things. For

(1) it is the rhythm of common speech and of written

prose, when rhythm is perceived in them. (2) It is the

rhythm of all but the most monotonously regular music,

so that in the words of choruses and refrains and in

songs written closely to music it arises. (3) It is

found in nursery rhymes, weather saws, and so on;

because, however these may have been once made in

running rhythm, the terminations having dropped off by

the change of language, the stresses come together and

so the rhythm is sprung. (4) It arises in common

(6) verse when reversed or counterpointed, for the same

reason.

But nevertheless in spite of all this and though Greek

and Latin lyric verse, which is well known, and the old

English verse seen in _Pierce Ploughman_ are in sprung

rhythm, it has in fact ceased to be used since the

Elizabethan age, Greene being the last writer who can

be said to have recognised it. For perhaps there was

not, down to our days, a single, even short, poem in

English in which sprung rhythm is employed not for

single effects or in fixed places but as the governing

principle of the scansion. I say this because the

contrary has been asserted: if it is otherwise the poem

should be cited.

Some of the sonnets in this book* (*See previous note.)

are in five-foot, some in six-foot or Alexandrine lines.

Nos. 13 and 22 are Curtal-Sonnets, that is they are

constructed in proportions resembling those of the

sonnet proper, namely 6 + 4 instead of 8 + 6, with

however a halfline tailpiece (so that the equation is

rather 12/8 + 9/2 = 21/2 + 10 1/2).

(7)

_EARLY POEMS_

For a Picture of

St. Dorothea_

I BEAR a basket lined with grass;

I am so light, I am so fair,

That men must wonder as I pass

And at the basket that I bear,

Where in a newly-drawn green litter

Sweet flowers I carry,--sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,

None in Caesar's gardens blow,--

And a quince in hand,--not one

Is set upon your boughs below;

Not set, because their buds not spring;

Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.

But these were found in the East and South

Where Winter is the clime forgot.--

The dewdrop on the larkspur's mouth

O should it then be quenchèd not?

In starry water-meads they drew

These drops: which be they? stars or dew?

Had she a quince in hand? Yet gaze:

Rather it is the sizing moon.

Lo, linked heavens with milky ways!

That was her larkspur row.--So soon?

Sphered so fast, sweet soul?--We see

Nor fruit, nor flowers, nor Dorothy.

Heaven--Haven

A nun takes the veil_

I HAVE desired to go

Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be

Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

And out of the swing of the sea.

The Habit of Perfection_

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.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark

And find the uncreated light:

This ruck and reel which you remark

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,

Desire not to be rinsed with wine:

The can must be so sweet, the crust

So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend

Upon the stir and keep of pride,

What relish shall the censers send

Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,

But you shall walk the golden street

And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride

And now the marriage feast begun,

And lily-coloured clothes provide

Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

_POEMS 1876-1889_

THE WRECK

OF THE DEUTSCHLAND_

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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),

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,

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.

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.

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 mércy in all of us, out of us all

Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.

_PART THE SECOND_

'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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

Sister, a sister calling

A master, her master and mine!--

And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling;

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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 crucified

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.

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-worn Best.

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 perishlng_ 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?

For how to the heart's cheering

The down-dogged 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?

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.

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.

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.

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 conceived, 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.

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?

I admire thce, master of the tides,

Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;

The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs 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;

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.

Now burn, new born to the world,

Doubled-naturèd name,

The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled

Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,

Mid-numbered 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.

Dame, at our door

Drowned, and among our 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 hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's throng's

Lord.

Penmaen Pool_

_For the Visitors' Book at the Inn_

WHO long for rest, who look for pleasure

Away from counter, court, or school

O where live well your lease of leisure

But here at, here at Penmaen Pool?

You'll dare the Alp? you'll dart the skiff?--

Each sport has here its tackle and tool:

Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff;

Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen Pool.

What's yonder?--Grizzled Dyphwys dim:

The triple-hummocked Giant's stool,

Hoar messmate, hobs and nobs with him

To halve the bowl of Penmaen Pool.

And all the landscape under survey,

At tranquil turns, by nature's rule,

Rides repeated topsyturvy

In frank, in fairy Penmaen Pool.

And Charles's Wain, the wondrous seven,

And sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool.

For all they shine so, high in heaven,

Shew brighter shaken in Penmaen Pool.

The Mawddach, how she trips! though throttled

If floodtide teeming thrills her full,

And mazy sands all water-wattled

Waylay her at ebb, past Penmaen Pool.

But what 's to see in stormy weather,

When grey showers gather and gusts are cool?--

Why, raindrop-roundels looped together

That lace the face of Penmaen Pool.

Then even in weariest wintry hour

Of New Year's month or surly Yule

Furred snows, charged tuft above tuft, tower

From darksome darksome Penmaen Pool.

And ever, if bound here hardest home,

You've parlour-pastime left and (who'll

Not honour it?) ale like goldy foam

That frocks an oar in Penmaen Pool.

Then come who pine for peace or pleasure

Away from counter, court, or school,

Spend here your measure of time and treasure

And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool.

The Silver Jubilee:

To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 25th Year

of his Episcopate July 28. 1876_

THOUGH no high-hung bells or din

Of braggart bugles cry it in--

What is sound? Nature's round

Makes the Silver Jubilee.

Five and twenty years have run

Since sacred fountains to the sun

Sprang, that but now were shut,

Showering Silver Jubilee.

Feasts, when we shall fall asleep,

Shrewsbury may see others keep;

None but you this her true,

This her Silver Jubilee.

Not today we need lament

Your wealth of life is some way spent:

Toil has shed round your head

Silver but for Jubilee.

Then for her whose velvet vales

Should have pealed with welcome, Wales,

Let the chime of a rhyme

Utter Silver Jubilee.

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.

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.

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.

Buy then! bid then!--What?--Prayer, patience, alms,

vows.

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow

sallows!

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

Spring_

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring--

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the

winning.

_10

The Lantern out of Doors_

SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,

That interests our eyes. And who goes there?

I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,

With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright

In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:

They rain against our much-thick and marsh air

Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind

What most I may eye after, be in at the end

I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amend

There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot

fóllows kínd,

Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

_11

The Sea and the Skylark_

ON ear and ear two noises too old to end

Trench--right, the tide that ramps against the shore;

With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,

Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,

His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score

In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour

And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!

How ring right out our sordid turbid time,

Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:

Our make and making break, are breaking, down

To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.

_12

The Windhover:

To Christ our Lord_

I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal-

con, 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 ecstacy! 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.

_13

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 àll tràdes, 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.

_14

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, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a

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

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding

shoulder

Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!--

These things, these things were here and but the

beholder

Wanting; which two when they once meet,

The heart rears wings bold and bolder

And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off

under his feet.

_15

Caged Skylark_

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house,

dwells--

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,

Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,

Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells

Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--

Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,

But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,

But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

_16

In the Valley of the Elwy_

I REMEMBER a house where all were good

To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:

Comforting smell breathed at very entering,

Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.

That cordial air made those kind people a hood

All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing

Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:

Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,

All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;

Only the inmate does not correspond:

God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,

Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,

Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.

_17

The Loss of the Eurydice

Foundered March 24. 1878_

THE Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord:

Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,

Some asleep unawakened, all un-

warned, eleven fathoms fallen

Where she foundered! One stroke

Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!

And flockbells off the aerial

Downs' forefalls beat to the burial.

For did she pride her, freighted fully, on

Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?--

Precious passing measure,

Lads and men her lade and treasure.

She had come from a cruise, training seamen--

Men, boldboys soon to be men:

Must it, worst weather,

Blast bole and bloom together?

No Atlantic squall overwrought her

Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:

Home was hard at hand

And the blow bore from land.

And you were a liar, O blue March day.

Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;

But what black Boreas wrecked her? he

Came equipped, deadly-electric,

A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England

Riding: there did storms not mingle? and

Hailropes hustle and grind their

Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?

Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom;

Now it overvaults Appledurcombe;

Now near by Ventnor town

It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.

Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!

Royal, and all her royals wore.

Sharp with her, shorten sail!

Too late; lost; gone with the gale.

This was that fell capsize,

As half she had righted and hoped to rise

Death teeming in by her portholes

Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.

Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;

'All hands for themselves' the cry ran then;

But she who had housed them thither

Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.

Marcus Hare, high her captain,

Kept to her--care-drowned and wrapped in

Cheer's death, would follow

His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.

All under Channel to bury in a beach her

Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,

He thought he heard say

'Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.'

It is even seen, time's something server,

In mankind's medley a duty-swerver,

At downright 'No or yes?'

Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.

Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,

(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)

Takes to the seas and snows

As sheer down the ship goes.

Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;

Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;

Till a lifebelt and God's will

Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.

Now he shoots short up to the round air;

Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;

But his eye no cliff, no coast or

Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.

Him, after an hour of wintry waves,

A schooner sights, with another, and saves,

And he boards her in Oh! such joy

He has lost count what came next, poor boy.--

They say who saw one sea-corpse cold

He was all of lovely manly mould,

Every inch a tar,

Of the best we boast our sailors are.

Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he

Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty,

And brown-as-dawning-skinned

With brine and shine and whirling wind.

O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!

Leagues, leagues of seamanship

Slumber in these forsaken

Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.

He was but one like thousands more,

Day and night I deplore

My people and born own nation,

Fast foundering own generation,

I might let bygones be--our curse

Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,

Robbery's hand is busy to

Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;

Only the breathing temple and fleet

Life, this wildworth blown so sweet,

These daredeaths, ay this crew, in

Unchrist, all rolled in ruin--

Deeply surely I need to deplore it,

Wondering why my master bore it,

The riving off that race

So at home, time was, to his truth and grace

That a starlight-wender of ours would say

The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way

And one--but let be, let be:

More, more than was will yet be.--

O well wept, mother have lost son;

Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:

Though grief yield them no good

Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.

But to Christ lord of thunder

Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:

'Holiest, loveliest, bravest,

Save my hero, O Hero savest.

And the prayer thou hearst me making

Have, at the awful overtaking,

Heard; have heard and granted

Grace that day grace was wanted.'

Not that hell knows redeeming,

But for souls sunk in seeming

Fresh, till doomfire burn all,

Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.

_18

The May Magnificat_

MAY is Mary's month, and I

Muse at that and wonder why:

Her feasts follow reason,

Dated due to season--

Candlemas, Lady Day;

But the Lady Month, May,

Why fasten that upon her,

With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter

Than the most are must delight her?

Is it opportunest

And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother:

Her reply puts this other

Question: What is Spring?--

Growth in every thing--

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and green world all together;

Star-eyed strawberry-breasted

Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within;

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing

Mary sees, sympathising

With that world of good,

Nature's motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind

With delight calls to mind

How she did in her stored

Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this:

Spring's universal bliss

Much, had much to say

To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

Bloom lights the orchard-apple

And thicket and thorp are merry

With silver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoocall

Caps, clears, and clinches all--

This ecstacy all through mothering earth

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth

To remember and exultation

In God who was her salvation.

_19

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 dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding

bank.

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew--

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being só slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc únselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

_20

Duns Scotus's Oxford_

TOWERY city and branchy between towers;

Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-

racked, river-rounded;

The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and

town did

Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours

That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded

Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded

Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release

He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what

He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not

Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;

Who fired France for Mary without spot.

_21

Henry Purcell_

_The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell

and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given

utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond

that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as

created both in him and in all men generally._

HAVE fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear

To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,

An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal

Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy,

here.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,

Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:

It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal

Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs

the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me!

only I'll

Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to

his pelted plumage under

Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked

his while

The thunder-purple seabeach plumè purple-of-thunder,

If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a

colossal smile

Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with

wonder.

_22

Peace_

WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,

Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?

When, when, Peacè, will you, Peace? I'll not play

hypocrite

To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but

That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace

allows

Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu

Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,

That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here

does house

He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,

He comes to brood and sit.

_23

The Bugler's First Communion

A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hill

There)--boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish

Mother to an English sire (he

Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on

My late being there begged of me, overflowing

Boon in my bestowing,

Came, I say, this day to it--to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then ín regimental red.

Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet

To his youngster take his treat!

Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.

There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine,

By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling,

dauntless;

Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless;

Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.

Frowning and forefending angel-warder

Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;

March, kind comrade, abreast him;

Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.

How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,

When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach

Yields tender as a pushed peach,

Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!

Then though I should tread tufts of consolation

Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to

And do serve God to serve to

Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration.

Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strains

Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending

That sweet's sweeter ending;

Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns.

O now well work that sealing sacred ointment!

O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad

And locks love ever in a lad!

Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment

Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift.

In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing

That brow and bead of being,

An our day's God's own Galahad. Though this child's

drift

Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry

Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam

In backwheels though bound home?--

That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by;

Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas

Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did

Prayer go disregarded:

Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven

heard these.

_24

Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice_

THE dappled die-away

Cheek and wimpled lip,

The gold-wisp, the airy-grey

Eye, all in fellowship--

This, all this beauty blooming,

This, all this freshness fuming,

Give God while worth consuming.

Both thought and thew now bolder

And told by Nature: Tower;

Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder

That beat and breathe in power--

This pride of prime's enjoyment

Take as for tool, not toy meant

And hold at Christ's employment.

The vault and scope and schooling

And mastery in the mind,

In silk-ash kept from cooling,

And ripest under rind--

What life half lifts the latch of,

What hell stalks towards the snatch of,

Your offering, with despatch, of!

_25

Andromeda_

Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,

With not her either beauty's equal or

Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,

Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.

Time past she has been attempted and pursued

By many blows and banes; but now hears roar

A wilder beast from West than all were, more

Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?--

Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs

His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,

All while her patience, morselled into pangs,

Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,

With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

_26

The Candle Indoors_

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.

I muse at how its being puts blissful back

With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,

Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.

By that window what task what fingers ply,

I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack

Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack

There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.--

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire

Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault:

You there are master, do your own desire;

What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault

In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar

And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

_27

The Handsome Heart:

at a Gracious Answer_

'BUT tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy

You?'--'Father, what you buy me I like best.'

With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,

He swung to his first poised purport of reply.

What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly--

Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest--

To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,

Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.