Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Hopkins, Kingfishers, and Identity

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Source: http://dailym.ai/14dMwTJ
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
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 dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát 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
I am what I am, and what I am is Christ.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

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