Hyphenated Consonance

 

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.