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GerardManley Hopkins : That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection |
Cloud-puffball1, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches. Down roughcast2, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rutpeel parches Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest- selvèd spark Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. Across my floundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and This Jack3, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. |
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| FOOTNOTES |
| 1 Heraclitus who lived circa 500 B.C. was a philosopher whose principal doctrine was that everything came from fire and was in a constant state of change; 2 plaster used on outside walls; 3 this fellow |
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