In honor of National Poetry Month, which I just recently found out about, here are a couple of selections from one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Summa
| THE BEST ideal is the true | |
| And other truth is none. | |
| All glory be ascribèd to | |
| The holy Three in One. |
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! | |
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| 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! | |
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| 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. |
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