Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844 - 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.
2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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.40
6
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).
7
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,
8
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.
9
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;70
Father and fondler of
heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
10
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 mercy in all of
us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.
PART THE SECOND
11
'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.
12
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?
13
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.
14
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.
16
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?
17
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.
18
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?
19
Sister,
a sister calling
A master, her master and mine!-
And the inboard seas
run swirling and hawling;
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.
20
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.)
21
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.
22
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.
23
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.
24
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-worst Best.
25
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 perishing 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?
26
For
how to the heart's cheering
The down-dugged 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?
27
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.
28
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.
29
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.
30
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 conceivèd, 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.
31
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?
32
I
admire thee, master of the tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;
The recurb and the recovery
of the gulf's 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;
33
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.
34
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.
35
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