Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published — John Shaqi
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First PublishedHopkins, Gerard Manley
General
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
Poetry
Not now to name even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
. . . . . . . . . . .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, things with a revival,
things with a recovery,
Thy name . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
_59_
WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?--
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner I'll live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under--
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honour.
CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.
Call me England's fame's fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.
Where is the field I must play the man on?
O welcome there their steel or cannon.
Immortal beauty is death with duty,
If under her banner I fall for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.
_60_
THE times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one--
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.
Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal . . .
_61
Cheery Beggar_
BEYOND Magdalen 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 pine, pine
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer
him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.
. . . . . . . .
_62_
DENIS, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit
Caps occasion with an intellectual fit.
Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber'll hit
The bald and bold blinking gold when all's done
Right rooting in the bare butt's wincing navel in the sight
of the sun.
. . . . . . . .
_63_
THE furl of fresh-leaved dogrose down
His cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sun
Had swarthed about with lion-brown
Before the Spring was done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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