Soulful Blues
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What can you learn from reading a sonnet like this one? How does Hopkins make meaning and how are the techniques of the poem important in that process? Does engaging in such analysis help you become a better poet?
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells
Crying "Whát I do is me: for that I came."
I say more: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is -
Chríst - for 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
And for that matter, what do you think Hopkins is saying?
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells
Crying "Whát I do is me: for that I came."
I say more: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is -
Chríst - for 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
And for that matter, what do you think Hopkins is saying?