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Apr. 30th, 2019 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
therindeAnother poem, just before April ends, this time from Hopkins:
As kingfishers 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.
Í say more: the just man justices;
Keeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
Chríst. 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.
It's not my theology by any means, but I find it a beautiful notion. Even more, I love the double struggle for expression: the "mortal thing" to proclaim its essential identity through its actions, and the poet to find a verb for that very activity of proclaiming.
As kingfishers 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.
Í say more: the just man justices;
Keeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
Chríst. 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.
It's not my theology by any means, but I find it a beautiful notion. Even more, I love the double struggle for expression: the "mortal thing" to proclaim its essential identity through its actions, and the poet to find a verb for that very activity of proclaiming.
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Date: 2019-05-01 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-01 04:21 pm (UTC)His longing for the beauty of, specifically, men always pains me, too. I wonder what poetry he might have written if he had felt able to act on that desire -- it might have been better, or worse, who knows, but that longing makes me wish he could have been happier. Although maybe he was happy, in a way inconceivable to me.
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Date: 2019-05-02 12:35 am (UTC)