I will not loose my grip
(after Gerard Manley Hopkins)
No, I will not flee,
while I struggle as a mortal man,
using all the power that I can,
while I am struggling to be free,
to be free, from sin, from my own iniquity
and yet its your familiar / unfamiliar face that I scan
while I am trying to comprehend why our fighting did began,
why someone Godly, divine chose me as an adversary?
The dust covers both of us,
while the sun is already rising
and my foot feels full of pain and odd,
but I will not loose my grip even if I must
and I am first begging for your blessing,
for your compassion, Oh my God, my God.
[Reference: “Carrion Comfort” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Your Love And Pure Integrity Is Not In Dispute, Lord (Cavatina Sequence)
(after Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Your love and pure integrity is not
in dispute, Lord,
yet my enemies grow in their power,
in Your record
their evil ways constantly do prosper,
they can afford
great mansions are quite happy in their sin
while there is no place for me to be in.
Even if You were not my dearest friend,
I am not free
from trepidation, from Your punishment,
tranquillity,
avoids me, destruction follow in my steps;
iniquity
is with them that do wreck my livelihood,
while constantly I do only mean good.
Let the great harvest come while I tell some
of Your kindness,
give real power to all my words and works,
in my blindness
help me to see all of Your loving care
while You do bless
me again and again in times of strain,
rid me of all my pain, while You send rain.
[Reference: 'Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Your works display your righteousness
(after Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Your works display your righteousness, Lord,
and your love and mercy I cannot comprehend,
even your wisdom and power is without end,
Your sincerity is displayed in your word
but the works of my enemies prosper
and they are men, who do not honour you,
whose lives, whose words are never true,
while all my endeavours end in disaster
and Sir, at times I am struggling to know
if you view me as a enemy or as a friend,
while vile men rise against me, even every fiend,
creatures that with darkness glow.
I pray to have your blessings again,
to comprehend your will,
for protection against all the gathering evil,
for your presence like sweet refreshing drops of rain
and please forgive my faithlessness,
forgive my uncomprehending human ways
while you visit me in the coming days
and may I find in your presence tranquillity and rest.
[Reference: “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Far Too Many Aspens Are Now Felled (Cavatina)
(after William Cowper and Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Far too many aspens are now felled,
gone is the shade
while the wind blows and its searching in vain
the colonnade
where it once played its own happy song;
it is man made
the destruction that came, the great havoc
that down many rows of great trees did knock.
[References: “The Poplar-Field” by William Cowper and “Binsey Poplars” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Carrion Comfort
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist -- slack they may be -- these last strands of man
In me {'o}r, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruis{`e}d bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avo{'i}d thee and
flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
cheer.
Cheer wh{'o}m though? The h{'e}ro whose h{'e}aven-handling fl{'u}ng
me, f{'o}ot tr{'o}d
Me? or m{'e} that f{'o}ught him? O wh{'i}ch one? is it e{'a}ch one? That
n{'i}ght, that y{'e}ar
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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To Him Who Ever Thought with Love of Me
To him who ever thought with love of me
Or ever did for my sake some good deed
I will appear, looking such charity
And kind compassion, at his life’s last need
That he will out of hand and heartily
Repent he sinned and all his sins be freed.
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Summa
The best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribèd to
The holy Three in One.
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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By the by, if the English race had done nothing else, yet if they left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Sea Took Pity
The sea took pity: it interposed with doom:
‘I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:
Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,
And she shall child them on the New-world strand.’
. . . . . . . .
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.
quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Convention in Miami
for Gerard Manley Hopkins
Around his navel this morning
a halo, a red stipple
Hopkins would love:
'Glory be to God for dappled things...'
It's a gift from this woman
he doesn't know
who welcomed him last night
with open arms and open legs
and sent him back to his wife
this morning, unaware
he was bringing home a souvenir,
a bright halo of crab lice.
poem by Donal Mahoney
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To His Watch
Mortal my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time’s some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die—
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort’s carol of all or woe’s worst smart.
Field-flown, the departed day no morning brings
Saying ‘This was yours’ with her, but new one, worse,
And then that last and shortest…
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Heaven-Haven
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Spring (in answer to Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Spring has an own beauty
where grasses and weeds appear with brush
and stem, growing in full lush
and the sky, the air has serenity
and insects, birds and animals are full of activity,
the wind quivers in every bush, bulrush and rush
in the veldt and at the marsh and even the little thrush
sings to its heart’s content with a magic quality
the whole of nature rejoices its joy
as if everything has a new beginning
without any threat or ploy
almost like Eden before the sinning
innocent as the heart of every small girl and boy
where the light of God is brightly shining.
[Reference: Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Note that the rhyme scheme of some Petrach or Italian sonnets was abba/abba/cd/cd/cd and not just abba/abba/cde/cde. Although Hopkins’s verse is viewed as a modern sonnet it meets all the requirements
of a Italian / patrach sonnet.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Strike, Churl
Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail
May’s beauty massacre and wispèd wild clouds grow
Out on the giant air; tell Summer No,
Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.
poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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