The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Quotes

“ Pied Beauty— "

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

“The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.
(from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“...Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“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, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published

“Shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“No, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“I have asked to be
Where no storms come”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.'
‘The child is father to the man!'
How can he be? The words are wild!”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

“...O if we but knew what to do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins