The Starlight Night
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Look at the stars! look, look up at the
skies!
O
look, at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where
quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a
prize.
Buy then! bid then! – What? – Prayer,
patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard
boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors
house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts
the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
*******
Nice.
One evening this past weekend I thumbed through an old
copy of Astronomy, and a line or two from some classic poem was quoted within
without attribution. I did some quick googling and came up with this poem of Hopkin’s.
It is not the poem that the Astronomy author mentioned, though. That poem
is still as yet unknown to me (but not for long).
Normally I am not a fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins. It’s
not quite due to the prolix alliteration (actually, consonance, the
repetition of consonant sounds within a sentence or line). I am quite a fan of
alliteration, if only for a shlocky see-what-I-can-do shallow boastfulness when
I write. With Hopkins I think it’s all the hyphenated consonance that irks me.
Indeed, were I a lad a century ago passing by his desk as he labored over a
poem, tongue jutting out the side of his mouth, I don’t think I could resist
the temptation to “accidentally” bump his arm once his quill touched parchment.
And I’d circle round and do it again and again, each time “accidentally.” All because
of the cutesy hyphenated consonance.
But I dunno, there was something about this poem.
Perhaps it was the lingering sentimentality I felt with the still-open Astronomy
magazine still within arm’s reach. I walked out the backdoor, glancing up at
the skies, the open bowl of the universe above me, noting the winter stars
slowly receding towards the western horizon. The poem did evoke some neat
moments of nostalgia in me. Observing the stars in the woods on cold February
nights. Lake George, New York. Seeing constellation patterns and asterisms for
the first time. Learning the names and locations of stars.
Yes, this poem will get a pass from me. Gerard, I won’t
bully you for this.
In fact, I might pick up a book of his works next time
at one of the local libraries.
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