THE LANTERN OUT OF DOORS

'Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot, fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.'

Gerard Manley Hopkins 

THE BEAUTY OF A BLUEBELL

'I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.' 

Gerard Manley Hopkins in Roger Deakin, Wildwood, p.39.

THE MIND

'O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.'
Gerard Manley Hopkins. 'No worst' in The Major Works, p.167.  

TRUE GREATNESS

In honour of St Alphonsus Rodriguez

'Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say,
And those fell strokes that once scarred flesh, scored shield,
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
Record, and on the fighter forge the day.
On Christ they do, they on the martyr may;
But where war is within, what sword we wield
Not seen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet, he that hews out mountain, continent,
Earth, all, at last; who, with fine increment
Trickling, vein violets and tall trees makes more
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.'

Gerard Many Hopkins, The Major Works, p.182. 

UNION WITH CHRIST

'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.' 

Gerard Manley Hopkins in Eugene H Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, p.126.