That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire
Original Text
The Later Poetic Manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Facsimile, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991): 330-31. PR 4803 H44A6 1991 Robarts Library
1Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
2Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
3Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
4Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
5Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
6Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rutpeel parches
7Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crúst, dust; stánches, stárches
8Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
9Foótfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
10But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
11Mán, how fást his fíredint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
12Bóth are in an únfáthomable, áll is in an enórmous dárk
13Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
14Sheer off, disséveral, a stár, | death blots black out; nor mark
15Is ány of him at áll so stárk
16But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
17A héart's-clarion! Awáy grief's gásping, | joyless days, dejection.
18Across my foundering deck shone
19A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
20Fáll to the resíduary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
21In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
22I am all at once what Christ is |, since he was what I am, and
23Thís Jack, jóke, poor pótsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
24Is immortal diamond.
Publication Start Year
1918
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1996-2000.
Rhyme