Gerard Manley Hopkins: Verses about Steel Arms

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
Among strangers. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.
England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
To my creating thought, would neither hear
Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd
Remove. Not but in all removes I can
Kind love both give and get. Only what word
Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven's baffling ban
Bars or hell's spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.

ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?

W. You came by Caerwys, sir?
T. I came by Caerwys.
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle.
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night.
W. To-night, sir!
T. Soon, now: therefore
Have all things ready in his room.
W. There needs but little doing.
T. Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one companion,
His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,
But both will share one cell.—This was good news, Gwenvrewi.
W. Ah yes!
T. Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.

Exit Winefred.

No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the world
Call no such maiden ‘mine’. The deeper grows her dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries ‘What, Teryth! what, thou poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!’ Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet ’tis not a funeral,
Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with feeling that
Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly
Goes marching thro’ my mind. What sense is this? It has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!
I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.

Enter Gwenlo.
. . . . . . . .

ACT II.—Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.

C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my mind?
What stroke has Caradoc’s right arm dealt? what done? Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her—
Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm ’s done? There is no harm done, none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was—mock. O I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders, fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank’s edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven: O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what first lightning
Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home, nature’s business,
Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down this darksome world cómfort whére can I find
When ’ts light I quenched; its rose, time’s one rich rose, my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm and strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper disappointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life’s quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then? Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes—as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes. Come!

Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.
. . . . . . . .

After Winefred’s raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.

BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing,
While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that ’s lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief; in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
. . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cáme hither!
Not now to náme 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, thíngs with a revival, things with a recovery,
Thy name…
. . . . . . . .

[[A-text]]
to the happy memory of five Francisan nuns, exiles by the Falck Laws,
drowned between midnight |&| morning of December 7 [[1875]].

PART THE FIRST



Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living |&| dead;
Thou hast bound bones |&| veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it {'a}lmost {'u}nmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: |&| dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger |&| find the{'e}.



I did say yes
O at lightning |&| lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar |&| hour |&| night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep |&| 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 |&| 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 |&| wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, |&| 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 |&| a stress that stars |&| storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by |&| melt --
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable |&| miss).



It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;
Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden's knee;
The dense |&| the driven Passion, |&| frightful sweat:
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,
Tho' 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-number{'e}d form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man's malice, with wrecking |&| storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning |&| love, I found it, a winter |&| warm;
Father |&| fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending |&| 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 {'a}t {'o}nce, as once at a crash Paul,
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,
Make mercy in all of us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored king.

Part the second

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"Some find me a sword; some
The flange |&| the rail; flame,
Fang, or flood" goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But w{'e} dr{'e}am 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, |&| the blear share come.



On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take settler |&| 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 d{'i}d 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; |&| 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 |&| white-fiery |&| wh{'i}rlwind-swivell{`e}d 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 |&| the ride of her keel:
The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock?
And canvass |&| compass, the whorl |&| the wheel
Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she end{~u}red.



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 |&| light ship, shone,
And lives at last were washing away:
To the shrouds they took, -- they shook in the hurling |&| horrible airs.



One stirred from the rigging to save
The wild woman-kind below,
With a rope's end round the man, handy |&| brave --
He was pitched to his death at a blow,
For all his dreadnought breast |&| braids of thew:
They could tell him for hours, dandled the to |&| fro
Through the cobbled foam-fleece. What could he do
With the burl of the fountains of air, buck |&| the flood of the wave?



They fought with God's cold --
And they could not |&| 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 |&| 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 |&| mine! --
And the inboard seas run swirling |&| hawling?
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her; but sh{'e} that weather sees {'o}ne thing, one;
Has {'o}ne fetch {'i}n her: she rears herself to divine
Ears, |&| the call of the tall nun
To the men in the tops |&| the tackle rode over the storm's brawling.



She was first of a five |&| came
Of a coif{`e}d sisterhood.
(O Deutschland, double a desperate name!
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, |&| Luther, are two of a town,
Christ's lily |&| 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 |&| earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light;
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,
Thou martyr-master: in th{'y} sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers -- sweet heaven was
astrew in them.



Five! the finding |&| 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 priz{`e}d |&| 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! |&| these thy daughters
And five-liv{`e}d |&| leav{`e}d favour |&| 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 wildworst Best.



The majesty! what did she mean?
Breathe, arch |&| original Breath.
Is it l{'o}ve in her of the b{'e}ing as her l{'o}ver had b{'e}en?
Breathe, body of lovely Death.
They were else-minded then, altogether, the men
W{'o}ke thee with a we are p{'e}rishing in the w{'e}ather of
Genn{'e}sar{'e}th.
Or {'i}s 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-dugged ground-hugged grey
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing
Of pied |&| peeled May!
Blue-beating |&| hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,
With belled fire |&| 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?



N{'o}, but it was n{'o}t these.
The jading |&| jar of the cart,
Time's t{'a}sking, 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 |&| beat of endragon{`e}d 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 |&| dead;
Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch |&| 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 |&| the why;
Wording it how but by him that present |&| past,
Heaven |&| earth are word of, worded by? --
The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast
T{'a}rp{'e}{'i}an-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? --
F{'e}ast of the {'o}ne w{'o}man with{'o}ut st{'a}in.
For so conceiv{`e}d, so to conceive thee is done;
But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,
Word, that heard |&| kept thee |&| uttered thee {'o}utr{'i}ght.



Well, sh{'e} has th{'e}e for the pain, for the
Patience: but pity of the rest of them!
Heart, go |&| bleed at a bitterer vein for the
Comfortless unconfessed of them --
No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence
F{'i}nger of a t{'e}nder of, O of a f{'e}athery d{'e}licacy, the
br{'e}ast of the
Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring {'o}f it, and
Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest, does
tempest carry the grain for thee?



I admire thee, master of the tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;
The recurb |&| the recovery of the gulf's sides,
The girth of it |&| the wharf of it |&| the wall;
Staunching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind;
Ground of being, |&| granite of it: p{'a}st {'a}ll
Gr{'a}sp G{'o}d, thr{'o}ned beh{'i}nd
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 |&| the dark;
A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison,
The-last-breath penitent spirits -- the uttermost mark
Our passion-plung{`e}d giant risen,
The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his
strides.



Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-natur{`e}d name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-number{`e}d 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 sh{'o}wer, let fl{'a}sh to the sh{'i}re, not a l{'i}ghtning of
f{'i}re hard-h{'u}rled.



Dame, at our door
Dr{'o}wned, |&| among o{'u}r sh{'o}als,
Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the reward:
Our K{'i}ng back, Oh, upon {'E}nglish s{'o}uls!
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 h{'e}arts' charity's h{'e}arth's f{'i}re, our th{'o}ughts' chivalry's
thr{'o}ng's L{'o}rd.