Linda's Literary Home

Tag: God

  • Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”

    Image: Emily Dickinson  This daguerrotype, circa 1847 at age 17,  is likely the only authentic, extant image of the poet.

    Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”

    Emily Dickinson’s mystical drama features a carriage driver who appears to be a gentleman caller.  The speaker abandons both her work and leisure in order to accompany the kind gentleman on a carriage ride.  Dickinson’s mystical tendencies are on pull display in this poem.

    Introduction with Text of “Because I could not stop for Death”

    Emily Dickinson’s mystical drama “Because I could not stop for Death” plays out with a carriage driver who appears to be a gentleman calling on a lady for an evening outing.  The speaker leaves off her work as well as her leisure activities in order to accompany the gentleman on the carriage ride to their unspecified festivities.

    Certain childhood memories occasionally spur poets to compose verse that is thus influenced by such musing on past memories.  Examples of such nostalgic daydreaming include Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill,” Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” and a nearly perfect American-Innovative sonnet by Robert Hayden “Those Winter Sundays.” 

    In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” the speaker is also gazing back into her past, but this occasion is a much more momentous musing than merely an ordinary childhood recollection.  The speaker in this memory poem is recalling the day she died. 

    The speaker frames the occasion as a metaphoric carriage ride with Death as the gentleman caller. This speaker is peering intuitively into the plane of existence well beyond that of the earth and into the eternal, spiritual level of being.

    Interestingly, the procession that the carriage ride follows seems to be echoing the concept that in the process of leaving the physical body at death, the mental faculty encased in the soul, experiences past scenes from its current existence. 

    Examples of such past-experienced scenes include the riding by a school and observing that the children were playing at recess; then, they drive by a field of grain and observe the sunset. These are scenes that the speaker has undoubtedly experienced during her current incarnational lifetime.

    Because I could not stop for Death

    Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –
    The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
    And Immortality.

    We slowly drove – He knew no haste,
    And I had put away
    My labor and my leisure too,
    For His Civility –

    We passed the School, where Children strove
    At recess – in the ring –
    We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
    We passed the Setting Sun –

    Or rather – He passed Us –
    The Dews drew quivering and chill –
    For only Gossamer, my Gown –
    My Tippet – only Tulle –

    We paused before a House that seemed
    A Swelling of the Ground –
    The Roof was scarcely visible –
    The Cornice – in the Ground –

    Since then – ’tis centuries – and yet
    Feels shorter than the Day
    I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
    Were toward Eternity –

    Reading of “Because I could not stop for Death” 

    Commentary on “Because I could not stop for Death”

    The speaker avers that she had no inclination to stop what she was doing for the sake of “Death.”  Nevertheless, Death—as a kindly carriage driver, appearing to be a gentleman caller—was polite enough to invite her to join him on an outing.  

    Because of this kind gentleman’s polite demeanor, the speaker gladly leaves off both her ordinary, daily work plus her free time hours in order to accompany the gentleman on what portends to be a simple, pleasant carriage ride, perhaps including some evening social event.

    First Stanza: An Unorthodox Carriage Ride

    Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –
    The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
    And Immortality.

    In the first stanza, the speaker claims startlingly that she was unable to avail herself to cease her work and leave off her free time for a certain gentleman, whom she names “Death.”

    However, that gentleman Death had no problem in stopping for her, and he did so in such a polite fashion that she readily acquiesced to his kindness and agreed to join him for a carriage ride. 

    The speaker offers an additional shocking remark, noting that the carriage, in which the speaker and gentleman caller Death rode, was transporting not only the speaker and the gentleman but also one other passenger—”Immortality.”  Thus, the speaker has begun to dramatize an utterly unorthodox buggy ride. 

    The kind gentleman Death has picked up the speaker as if she were his date for a simple carriage ride through the countryside, but something otherworldly intrudes immediately with the presence of the third passenger.

    By personifying “Death” as a gentleman caller, the speaker imparts to that act a certain level of rationality that levels out fear and trepidation usually associated with the idea of dying.  

    Second Stanza:  The Gentleman Caller

    We slowly drove – He knew no haste,
    And I had put away
    My labor and my leisure too,
    For His Civility –

    The speaker then describes her momentous event. She has not only ceased her ordinary work, but she has also concluded her leisure–certainly not unusual for someone who dies.

    The gentleman caller Death has been so persuasive in suggesting a carriage ride that the speaker has easily complied with his suggestion. This kind and gracious man was in no hurry; instead, he offered a rhythmically methodical ushering into realms of peace and quiet.

    Third Stanza: A Review of a Life Lived

    We passed the School, where Children strove
    At recess – in the ring –
    We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
    We passed the Setting Sun –

    Next, the speaker reports that she was able to observe children playing at school during recess. She also views cornfields or perhaps fields of wheat.  She, then, views the setting of the sun. 

    The images observed by the speaker may be interpreted as symbols of three stages in each human life:  (1) children playing representing childhood, (2) the growing fields of grain symbolizing adulthood, and (3) the setting sun representing old age.

    The imagery also brings to mind the well-known concept that a dying person may experience the passing of scenes from one’s life before the mind’s eye.   The experience of viewing of past scenic memories from the dying person’s life seems likely to be for the purpose of readying the human soul for its next incarnation.

    Fourth Stanza:  The Passing Scenes

    Or rather – He passed Us –
    The Dews drew quivering and chill –
    For only Gossamer, my Gown –
    My Tippet – only Tulle –

    The speaker reveals that she is dressed in very light clothing.  On the one hand, she experiences a chill at witnessing the startling images passing before her sight.  But is it the light clothing or is it some other phenomenon causing the chill?

    Then on the other hand, it seems that instead of the carriage passing those scenes she has described of children playing, grain growing, and sun setting, those scenes may actually be passing the carriage riders.  The uncertainly regarding this turn of events once again supports the commonly held notion that the speaker is viewing her life passing before her eyes.

    Fifth Stanza:  The Pause

    We paused before a House that seemed
    A Swelling of the Ground –
    The Roof was scarcely visible –
    The Cornice – in the Ground –

    By now, the carriage has almost reached its destination, and instead of a gala or festive outing, it is the speaker’s gravesite before which the carriage has momentarily stopped. 

    Apparently, without shock or surprise, the speaker now dramatically unveils the image of the grave:  she sees a mound of dirt, but she cannot see the roof of the building that she expected, and any ornamental moulding that might have decorated the house also remains out of the sight of the speaker who assumes it is “in the Ground.”

    Sixth Stanza: Looking Back from Eternity

    Since then – ’tis centuries – and yet
    Feels shorter than the Day
    I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
    Were toward Eternity –

    In the final scene, the speaker is calmly reporting that she remains now—and has been all along—centuries in future time. She speaks plainly from her cosmic, eternal home on the spiritual/astral level of being. She has been reporting only on how events seemed to go on the day she died, that is, that day that her soul left its physical encasement.

    She recalls what she saw only briefly just after leaving her physical encasement (body). Yet, the time from the day she died to her time now centuries later feels to her soul as if it were a very short period of time. 

    The time that has passed, though it may be centuries, seems to the speaker relatively shorter than the earthly day of 24 hours.  The speaker avers that on that day the heads of the horses drawing the carriage were pointing “toward Eternity.” 

    The speaker has unequivocally described through metaphor and metaphysical terminology the transition from life to death. That third occupant of the carriage offered the assurance that the speaker’s soul had left the body but continued to exist beyond that body.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “Like Brooms of Steel”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “Like Brooms of Steel”

    Emily Dickinson’s “Like Brooms of Steel” features the riddle-like metaphoric usage that the poet so often employs.  She playfully turns the natural elements of snow and wind into brooms made of steel and allows them to sweep the streets, while the coldness draws stillness through the landscape.

    Like Brooms of Steel

    Like Brooms of Steel
    The Snow and Wind
    Had swept the Winter Street –
    The House was hooked
    The Sun sent out
    Faint Deputies of Heat —
    Where rode the Bird
    The Silence tied
    His ample — plodding Steed
    The Apple in the Cellar snug
    Was all the one that played.

    Commentary  on “Like Brooms of Steel”

    For Emily Dickinson the seasons offered ample opportunities for verse creation, and her love for all of the seasons is quite evident in her poems.  However, her poetic dramas become especially deep and profound in her winter poems.

    First Movement:   The Nature of Things in Winter

    Like Brooms of Steel
    The Snow and Wind
    Had swept the Winter Street —

    The speaker has been observing and musing on the nature of things in winter. She finally speaks and makes the remarkable claim that the “Winter Street” looks as if it has been swept by “Brooms of Steel.” The “Snow and Wind” are the agencies that have behaved like those hard, industrial brooms.  In Dickinson’s time were decidedly absent those big plows we have today that come rumbling down the streets, county roads, and interstates.

    But those simple natural elements of snow and wind have moved the snow down the street in such a way that it looks as if it has been swept with a broom. And not just a straw broom would do, but it had to be a steel broom, an anomaly even in Dickinson’s century.

    Second Movement:  House as Big Warm Rug

    The House was hooked
    The Sun sent out
    Faint Deputies of Heat –

    The speaker then remarks about “the House,” which looked as if it had been, “hooked.” She is referring to the process of creating a rug with a loom that employs a hook.  The house is like a big warm rug as “The Sun sent out / Faint Deputies of Heat.” Of course, the sun will always be sending out heat, but this speaker looks upon those dribbles of warmth as mere “Deputies.”  They are sent in place of the sheriff, who will not appear until summer, or late spring at the most.

    Third Movement:  A Tree Steed

    Where rode the Bird
    The Silence tied
    His ample – plodding Steed

    The speaker then spies a bird, who seems to have ridden in on a “plodding Steed.” But the steed has been stilled by “silence”—denoting that the steed was indeed a tall tree. The tree is silenced by fall having blown away all of his leaves. He no longer rustles in the wind, but he does serve as a useful vehicle for both bird and poet.

    Fourth Movement:   Silent, Frozen

    The Apple in the Cellar snug
    Was all the one that played.

    The winter scene is filled with things that are still, silent, frozen in place by those agents of cold. The still bird sits in the still tree, silent, waiting in the frozen atmosphere. The musing speaker detects both silence and stillness and makes them vibrant with an inner, spiritual movement.

    Yet, the speaker has to confess that the only real movement, things that might be said to have “played” that cold day, belongs to the “Apple in the Cellar.” The apple is “snug,” wrapped in tissue paper, preserved for the long winter months. 

    Or perhaps even some apple wine is “snug” in its bottle, and might even be a better candidate for playing.  But they differ greatly from those outdoor creatures; those apples possess a level of warmth that allows them to play, although the irony of such playing might intrigue and tickle the fancy of the musing mind that deigns to contemplate the icy bitterness of winter.

    Misplaced Line Alters Meaning

    A number of sites that offer this poem—for example, bartleby.com—misplace the line, “The Apple in the Cellar snug,” relocating it after “Faint Deputies of Heat.”

    This alteration changes the meaning of the poem:  Dickinson’s poem makes it clear that it is the “apple” that is the only one who played.  While it might seem more sensible to say a horse played instead of an apple, that is not what the original poem states.   And, in actuality, the apple does, in fact, do some moving as it will begin to decay even though it is securely wrapped for winter and stored in the cellar.

    The problem is, however, that the speaker has said that silence has “tied” or stilled the steed; he is not moving, which means that the bird is not moving. So to claim that the steed is playing gives motion to the bird, which the speaker claims is still.

    The only thing that makes sense is that the speaker is exaggerating the stillness by saying that the snug apple is playing. The irony of a playing apple does not contradict the stillness that the speaker is painting, while the playing steed would violate and confuse that meaning.

    Full Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

  • William Butler Yeats’ “The Indian upon God”

    Image 1:  Williams Butler Yeats – Chicago History Museum

    William Butler Yeats’ “The Indian upon God”

    Alluding to the Genesis concept of the image of God, the speaker parallels the Eastern spiritual tradition of pantheism to dramatize the full implication of that venerable concept.

    Introduction with Text of “The Indian upon God”

    William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Indian upon God” is displayed in ten riming couplets.   The theme of the poem dramatizes the biblical concept that God made man in His own image: 

    So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them… (King James Version, Genesis 1:27).

    The full implication of this fascinating dictum is that God, in fact, created all of creation after His own image.   And while—because of the influence of postmodernism—that concept often receives short shrift in Western art culture, Eastern culture has long embraced it fully.

    William Butler Yeats became fascinated by Eastern philosophy and religion.  And while Yeats also fell victim to the “romantic misunderstanding” of many of the concepts pointed out by T. S. Eliot, Yeats still managed to dramatize certain ideas appropriately.

    This poem “The Indian upon God” remains one of his most accurate offerings from among the pieces that he based upon his take on Eastern philosophy.

    The Indian upon God

    I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
    My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
    My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
    All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
    Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
    Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
    Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
    The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
    I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk: 
    Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
    For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
    Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
    A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
    Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,  
    He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
    Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
    I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
    Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
    He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night      
    His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.   

    Commentary on “The Indian upon God”

    The speaker is paralleling the Eastern spiritual tradition of pantheism to dramatize the full impact of that venerable concept presented in Genesis:  creation—including  all created beings along with humankind—is created in the image of the Creator (God).

    Image 2:   Moorfowl Bird Guides

    First Movement:  The Moorfowl

    I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
    My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
    My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
    All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
    Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
    Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
    Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
    The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye. 

    The speaker of the poem opens his musings by placing himself alongside a body of water as he walks under trees that he senses to have been moistened likely by a recent rain. In a meditative mood, he muses on the spiritual atmosphere of his locus.  

    He spies some birds pacing about and begins to consider how the moorfowl would elucidate his existence if he could do so in words.  He continues musing on the birds as they are leisurely moving about.

    Finally, the speaker, in his mind’s ear, imagines that the oldest bird begins to declaim about his existence.  That discourse is roughly paraphrased by the following:  

    my Maker is an immortal moorfowl, Who has created all the world, and He remains hidden behind His skyey perch from where He sends the rains and lights His creation with “His eye.”

    The moorfowl visualizes his Creator as a glorious version of himself.  His Creator possesses a “bill” and a “wing,” and the rains drop from His wings, while the moonbeams shoot from His eye.

    Image 3 Lotus – Photo by Ron Grimes

    Second Movement:  Lotus

    I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk: 
    Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
    For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
    Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide. 

    The speaker then moves on a short distance and begins his musing on what a lotus might say in explaining his origin: thus, the lotus also holds forth about his Creator:  

    my Maker and the ruler of the world “hang[s] on a stalk.”  I am made in His image, and this rain He is sending from between His enormous petals

    The lotus also describes his Creator as an embellished version of himself.  His Creator “hangeth on a stalk,” just as the lotus flower does, and his Maker also causes the rain to fall.  

    And similar to the moorfowl’s conception that the rain drips from the Supreme Moorfowl’s wings, the lotus’ Creator lets the rain “slide” between His petals. 

    Image 4: Roebuck – iStock

    Third Movement: Roebuck

    A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
    Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,  
    He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
    Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me? 

    The speaker continues on and crafts the fulmination of a roebuck, whose eyes were full of “starlight,” as he, too, explains his creative origin, labeling his Maker, “The Stamper of the Skies“:

    the creator of the world is a tender and mild roebuck, who else could have thought to fashion such a being as myself who remains so sorrowful yet so softly gentle?

    The roebuck concludes that his Creator has to be like himself in order to be able to fashion his unique characteristics of sadness, softness, and gentleness.  It is noteworthy that the roebuck makes his claim through a rhetorical question, which appears to humble his claim yet at the same time gives it particular emphasis.

    Image 5: Peacock – Animal Wildlife

    Fourth Movement:  Peacock

    I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
    Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
    He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night      
    His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light. 

    The speaker moves farther along, and listening to a peacock, he muses that the bird would describe his origin as the following: 

    I was created by a huge peacock who also created all vegetation and all other animals.  My Maker moves His bright features through the sky, from where He sends to us the light from the stars.

    Again, the animal describes his Creator in terms of his own characteristics. The peacock, however, verges on the boastful with his description, claiming that the “monstrous peacock,” or more glorious version of himself, also made the grass and worms.  

    The peacock implies that his Creator has made these creatures for the sake of the peacock.  And the peacock also likens his beautiful tail feathers to stars hanging in the skies.

    Image 6: Divine Mother  – Self-Realization Fellowship

    Creation: Image of the Divine

    The philosophy portrayed in William Butler Yeats’ poem is pantheism, the concept that God is everything.  If man (humankind) correctly discerns that God created human beings in His image, then God, in fact, created everything else that exists in His image.  

    If all things are reflections of one Creator, then each thing created can rightly aver that it is made in the image of the Divine. Pantheism is also logically monotheism:  all of creation taken together is one entity.  

    The monotheistic religions of empirical reality—as opposed to that of the  mythological Greek and Roman pantheon of gods—all expound the nature of God as a trinity—one being expressing in three aspects.  For example, in Hinduism the trinity is Sat-Tat-Aum (also expressed as Sat-Chit-Ananda).  The Christian trinity is expressed a Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

    All of the five major world religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are monotheistic.  Hinduism is often mistakenly referred to a a polytheistic religion by commentators who confuse the names for the various aspects of God as separate gods. 

    Capitalizing Pronouns Referring to God

    The King Jame Version of the Holy Bible does not capitalize the pronouns referring to God; that custom is a 19th century invention.   However, I usually capitalize pronouns referring to the Deity to make clear that such references are, in fact, referring to God.   In this commentary,  I have capitalized the pronouns primarily to make clear that the various individuals are referring to their Maker or God.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “My own heart let me more have pity on; let”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “My own heart let me more have pity on; let”

    The speaker in this sonnet examines his inward struggle, through which he has learned mercy toward the self (soul) while undergoing heavy, sustained spiritual pressure.  My personal issue with this pressure assures me that Father Hopkins well understood its vicissitudes as well as its rewards.

    Introduction and Text of “My own heart let me more have pity on; let”

    In this final terrible sonnet, the speaker turns inward to speak directly to his own heart; he does so with urgency but restraint. The sonnet foregrounds his own personal moral and spiritual reckoning.  In that accounting, he has found that self-pity is not indulgence but instead it is simply charity rightly ordered and affirmed. 

    The poetic language pushes as well as it knots itself into compression.  It portrays the pressure exerted on a mind that has been tormented to the point of exhaustion.  Thus, now that exhausted mind must seek a genuine place to rest.

    Readers may note that Father Hopkins has separated  both the octave and the sestet into two quatrains in the octave and two tercets in the sestet.  This kind of separation adds to the dramatic effect that each stanza represents.  

    The sonnet could be interpreted as consisting of four movements; however, for consistency of preserving the Petrarchan model, I have kept them grouped in my commentary as simply octave and sestet.

    My own heart let me more have pity on; let

    My own heart let me more have pity on; let
    Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
    Charitable; not live this tormented mind
    With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

    Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
    You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile
    Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

    At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
    ‘S not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
    Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

    Reading

    Commentary on “My own heart let me more have pity on; let”

    The sonnet dramatizes four movements, as mentioned above,  from self-laceration to self-mercy, which has led to the discovery of hope—not by force of harsh discipline but by soft, divinely inspired release.

    Octave: “My own heart let me more have pity on; let”

    My own heart let me more have pity on; let
    Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
    Charitable; not live this tormented mind
    With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

    The speaker begins the octave by offering a plea that is, however, also a command.  He is directly addressing his own heart as both somewhat metaphorically as both judge and defendant. The line “Let me more have pity on” signals a deliberate act of will: pity must be allowed to exist and work its power, not merely be passively felt. 

    The speaker then labels his accustomed cruelty toward himself: he has become a “tormented mind” that compounds his suffering by continually rehearsing it. The repetition of “tormented” mimics the cycle he is condemning; his has become a mind that had kept turning upon itself without pause to rest. 

    Charity here does not engage merely for sentimental purposes; it remains a necessary,  ethical discipline, employing the discipline to refuse to continually inflict self-harm, even under the guise of rigor.

    The second quatrain moves quite quickly but assertively, and then it intensifies the uselessness of the same old, ordinary search for simple, quiet comfort. Casting “for comfort” metaphorically creates the two leisure activities of  fishing and gambling. Both of these activities involve chance, and uncertainty often hands over nothing to the player after plunging much effort into them. 

    The “blind/Eyes” image sharpens the deadlock: Blind eyes cannot see daylight simply by groping, while thirst cannot be slaked by being dunked in water that is not fit to drink.  Again, the poet has been performing his duty of giving back to the reader his own experience.  And the mark of a great poet is that he does so completely in a natural, believable voice, as Father Hopkins does here.

    The paradox of “thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet” completely and earnestly captures spiritual barrenness as it spirits about in a world of abundance, where remedies for maladies surround the suffering soul yet remain remote and unreachable. 

    The octave thus has closed every false door. The  activities of exerting much effort, of analyzing each sorrow’s parts, and then groping toward some restless search have only deepened the dryness of the  issue. The speaker’s understanding and honesty now clear the way for a genuine rejoinder that does not hang on mastery or grasping.

    The minds and hearts of all humanity remain in search of such genuineness, especially as it contemplates it own mortality.  The winds of change may threaten the material world, but the astral and causal levels of being hold promises that humanity keeps deep in its bosom.

    Sestet: “Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise”

    Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
    You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile
    Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

    At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
    ‘S not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
    Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

    The speaker in the sestet now is able to turn advice into consolation, as he discovers joy; and this joy was not seized by groping fingers but granted by steady grace, which arrived without exertion and through patience.

    In the sestet, the direct address broadens as the “Soul, self” bring together the divided mind/heart into a single event. The affectionate diminutive “Jackself” calms the weather of judgment, while weariness is acknowledged but without contempt. 

    The advice remains as simple as it is radical—“let be.” Thought itself must be allowed to rest “awhile,” not disappeared but its temperature lowered. The speaker suggests a turning “elsewhere,” away from the former obsessive peer into inwardness, leaving “comfort root-room.” Comfort cannot be bludgeoned at the root, an joy must be afforded a place to increase.

    The speaker then suspends time as well as outcome, when he asserts “At God knows when to God knows what.” This line refuses acts that schedule or  measure. It finds that hope exists only under divine discretion. The smile then appears quite naturally because it is “not wrung”; it is not forced by circumstances , neither is it caught up by the will. Instead, this divine joy may come like a flash in “unforeseen times,” and the speaker compares that flash colorfully to the sudden light that appears between mountains. 

    This image then significantly gives honor to the obstruction without dragging in the issue of despair: the mountains still remain mountains, but between them, a mile or so  has been wonderfully lighted.   The sonnet concludes with a vista—limited, lovely, and sufficient. Mercy toward the self has become the condition for perceiving the divine light, for experiencing joy, and it is patience that remains the means by which that blessed condition endures.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – Inspirational Jesuits

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”

    This sonnet is counted as one of Father Hopkins’ six “terrible sonnets.”

    Introduction and Text of “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”

    The speaker in Father Hopkins’ “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray” explores searchingly the nature of  spiritual endurance. He is focusing on patience not as a soft virtue but as a challenging and difficult discipline, which oftentimes scars the pride, while exhausting the will.  

    But those actions still reflect and align with divine will and action. As he usually does, this speaker reveals the hard discipline of God remains always for the betterment of humankind.  As human beings, we all search for—or at least wish for—our own betterment.

    As a Jesuit priest, Father Hopkins made it his mission to seek divine guidance, and unlike us non-priestly poets, he focused primarily on religious and spiritual issues that affected him deeply.

    Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray

    Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
    But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
    Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
    To do without, take tosses, and obey.
    Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
    Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
    Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
    Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

    We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
    To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
    Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
    And where is he who more and more distils
    Delicious kindness? – He is patient. Patience fills
    His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

    Reading

    Commentary on “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”

    As human beings, we learn early that patience is an important personal quality, but the speaker in this sonnet is revealing his inner turmoil as an  argument against  which he confronts resistance even as he refuses to decry the virtue that seems to be resisting him.   He treats the virtue of patience in a realistic manner—not with sentimentality.  He asserts that patience is both vitally necessary as well as deeply painful.

    The humanity of his cries shows us that as we strive and struggle, all of humanity has done so.  Father Hopkins lived in the 19th century—two centuries earlier than our own, and yet his struggles are our struggles.

    Octave: “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”

    The speaker begins the octave with an effusive cry—no calm reflection here!  He invokes “patience” immediately and pairs it with prayer; they are both difficult things to approach and accomplish.  We often cry for what we seem to lack, even in the 21st century.

    He knows that genuine prayer requires patience, and it is a kind of patience that the heart and mind naturally resist in a fallen world.   The sharpness of his complaint is emphasized through repetition.

    He then seems to create a stunning paradox in that patience is difficult, but it is also “bid for.” The speaker easily confesses that patience is not only endured, but it is sought and asked for, even though that asking heralds conflict. 

    Personified as a female figure who is doing the asking, Patience paradoxically “wants war, wants wounds,” and those qualities expose that there is a cost in acquiring her. She commands that one live a life without ease, which includes doing without things one might need for comfort, receiving blows that stun and hurt, all the while remaining obedient.  Dame Patience then requires obedience under pressure with the willingness to accept pain, trials, and tribulations that seem arbitrary instead of well-deserved.

    The speaker asserts that that kind of patience remains rare, even fragile. It takes hold only under these catastrophic conditions; for if they are removed them, there is not patience within existence.  This insistence blows up the notion that patience can be a decorative virtue experienced in comfort; instead, patience makes it appearance only in deprivation, instability, and any other calamity. 

    Still through all this mayhem, the speaker refuses to qualify her as infertile. Through a striking shift in tone and assurance,  patience then transforms into “Natural heart’s ivy” —a living being, covering “our ruins of wrecked past purpose.” We chafe under ruined purposes as we try to build a better world even in current times.

    With that ivy image, the speaker is acknowledging that failure and collapse within the self, which include all past intentions are broken and defeated. Patience, however, does not convert them; she merely masks them by covering all that damage with new growth.

    The final lines of the octave seems to complicate the struggle. Patience is basking in colorful accoutrements, yet luxuriant color and fluidity suggest abundance, as well as beauty, even though it is a beauty that grows over wreckage. 

    The speaker thus remains well aware that such patience beautifies what has been lost without denying the loss itself. The octave leaves the speaker’s fragility suspended between intense pain and strange fertility—between war and ivy.

    Sestet: “We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills”

    In the sestet, the speaker turns inward with even greater urgency. He hears that “our hearts grate on themselves”; this image is harsh and mechanical, suggesting inner resistance. And patience can be understood as not only difficult, but it is also possibly lethal, in that “it kills / To bruise them dearer.” 

    That claim is intimating that the heart continues to hang onto its own wounds because it would rather retain the familiar pain than to face the adversity made possible by surrender. 

    Especially within the confines of such thinking,  the speaker has to surrender to an subtle prayer: “the rebellious wills / Of us we do bid God bend to him.” Even as the will resists God, it, at the same time, must supplicate to God to transcend its resistance.  An exotic tension unfolds the divided mind/soul as it prays. It remains faithful but still defiant.

    The main focus that has infused itself throughout the entire sonnet comes into sharp relief in the form of the question “where is the goodness that justifies all of this misery and suffering?”  A question to haunts our current civilization as surely as it did two centuries ago!

     The speaker responds not with an argumentative abstract notion, but with a person. “He is patient.” God’s kindness can come only slowly, similar to a liquid being “distilled,” drop by drop, rather than being poured out all at once.  As science has shown us certain processes, poetry shows us the metaphorical value of understanding those processes.

    Patience is not merely a virtue that human beings must learn; it is the basic method of God’s own divine action. The final image of “crisp combs” brings to mind honey made by bees that labor furiously as they produce such sweetness. 

    Patience “fills” them (all of creation’s creatures), and from that fullness comes kindness in “those ways we know,” as it ascends to human experience through evolutionary time rather than temporal spectacle.

    In the sestet, the speaker comes close to showing how to defend one’s heart and mind in the struggle that humanity is engaged in.  He does not provide direct relief from pain or a way to guard against rebellion. 

    But instead, the speaker suggests that the answer can only be understood in terms of what is human and what is divine; thus, human patience can be seen to resemble divine patience.  The pain and suffering experiences by human beings can be converted into the divine stuff that produces sweetness, i.e., kindness.

    The process, of course, is meditation and prayer, along with deep thought and service to humankind and the world at large, in whatever form that service must take—even writing poems, thus, can serve a divine purpose.

    We struggle today as humanity has struggled in the past.  From poets such as Father Hopkins, we can glean the depth of our sorrow but also we can be comforted that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of sad darkness, and we can determine that we will progress toward that light.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – Inspirational Jesuits

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    The third in the group of sonnets widely known as “the terrible sonnets,” this one,“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,” presents a speaker experiencing grief so intense that it feels beyond limit or measure.

    In the octave, suffering overwhelms his body and spirit and leads to urgent appeals for divine comfort. In the sestet, the speaker turns inward, describing his mind as dangerous terrain. The sonnet ends with a grim acknowledgment of mortality and the daily release offered by sleep.

    Introduction and Text of “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    Father Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief” is a sonnet that records extreme mental and spiritual suffering. Written in the traditional Petrarchan form, it moves from an octave of mounting anguish to a sestet of reflection and hard-earned recognition. 

    The speaker struggles to express grief that feels limitless and that is unrelieved by faith or prayer. Dense sound patterns and abrupt phrasing mirror the pressure of despair. Rather than offering comfort, the poem confronts pain directly, showing how the mind and soul endure when consolation seems absent.

    No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief

    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, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng —
    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.

    Reading

    Commentary on “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    The sonnet moves from outward cries of anguish to inward examination of mind. The octave presents grief as limitless, cumulative, and shared with the world at large. In the sestet, suffering becomes psychological, depicted as dangerous inner terrain. The poem ends without relief, settling instead on a sober recognition of death and the temporary rest found in sleep.

    Octave: “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    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, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng —
    Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked “No ling-
    Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.”

    The octave opens with a blunt assertion, denying that suffering reaches a final point. Grief, in this view, has no bottom and no boundary. The phrase “pitched past pitch of grief” reinforces this idea by suggesting that pain has gone beyond any scale by which it might be measured. Grief is not merely intense; it has surpassed all known limits.

    In the second line, the speaker explains how pain increases rather than diminishes.  Each new pang learns from the last. Suffering becomes more violent because it has practiced its activity and method. The verb “wring” suggests twisting pressure, as if grief grips and contorts the speaker from within. Pain is physical as well as mental, as the grip tightens.

    The speaker then turns to directly address urgency and confusion. The repetition of “where” emphasizes abandonment rather than disbelief. The speaker still believes in comfort but cannot find it. 

    The following line continues the appeal. The speaker invokes maternal mercy and protection, yet relief does not come. These lines reveal a faith under strain, not a faith rejected, but one tested by silence.

    Next, the speaker describes the sheer force of personal grief. The cries are compared to herds, large and uncontrollable. Individual anguish gathers into a single overwhelming mass. By calling it “world-sorrow,” the speaker enlarges private suffering into something shared by humanity across time. The grief feels ancient, collective, and unavoidable.

    This sorrow plays out “on an age-old anvil,” an image suggesting repeated blows over centuries. The anvil implies endurance and also punishment. On it, the cries “wince and sing.” Pain produces sound, and suffering is shaped into expression. The poem itself becomes the product of this hammering, forged under pressure.

    The octave ends with the sudden emotional recoil. The intensity momentarily subsides, only to be replaced by fury that demands an end: “No lingering!” The speaker feels forced to compress suffering into brevity, not because it is resolved, but because it is unbearable. The octave closes without comfort, suspended between eruption and exhaustion.

    Sestet: “O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall”

    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.

    The sestet turns inward, shifting attention from external cries to internal experience. The mind is described as a vast landscape, filled not with beauty but with danger. These “mountains” are steep and unstable, ending in sudden drops. Mental suffering is portrayed as perilous terrain.

    The cliffs are terrifying because they are steep and impossible to measure. Those who have not faced such depths cannot understand them.  The two half lines “Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there” conspire to dismisses the judgments of outsiders. Only those who have been suspended over these mental precipices know their true danger.

    The speaker then acknowledges human limitation.  Endurance is described as “small,” easily overwhelmed. Prolonged suffering exceeds what a person can reasonably bear. This admission removes any suggestion of weakness or failure. The problem is not the sufferer but the scale of the suffering.

    At this point, the speaker addresses the self (sou) directly; he recognizes personal vulnerability and degradation. The command to “creep” suggests retreat rather than triumph. Survival, not victory, becomes the goal.

    The comfort that follows is limited and unstable. Any relief comes amid turbulence. There is no calm resolution, only brief shelter within chaos. Comfort exists, but it is fragile and temporary.

    The sonnet ends with a stark conclusion.  Life moves inevitably toward death. Each day rehearses that ending through sleep, which brings both rest and unconsciousness. Sleep offers a small mercy, a pause from suffering, but it also mirrors death itself.

    The sestet does not undo the despair of the octave. Instead, it reframes it. The speaker accepts the limits of endurance and the reality of mortality. The sonnet closes with clarity rather than consolation, acknowledging that while suffering may not be cured, it can, at least, be named and endured one day at a time.

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  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    The speaker Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” is confronting spiritual desolation, interior darkness, and the sense of abandonment by God. 

    Awakening into psychological night, the speaker measures time not in hours but in years of suffering. His cries feel unheard, like letters sent to one who lives far away. In the sestet, suffering turns inward as his soul becomes both the source and the punishment of torment.

    Introduction and Text of “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    This sonnet is the second installment belonging to the group of six poems often called the “terrible sonnets.”  They focus on intense inward struggle in highly compressed language, and they reveal a profound sense of spiritual trial. The speaker is describing an internal condition of darkness that persists even after waking. 

    The poem follows the traditional Petrarchan structure, but the poet displayed the poem on the page separating the octave into two quatrains and the sestet into two tercets. The octave presents the condition of suffering, followed by the sestet which deepens and internalizes that suffering. The language remains quite visceral, yet sacramental and judicial, suggesting punishment and endurance.

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
    What hours, O what black hours we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
    And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

    With witness I speak this. But where I say
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
    To dearest him that lives alas! away.

    I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
    Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

    Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
    The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

    Reading

    Commentary on “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    In the octave, the speaker presents spiritual suffering as prolonged night and unanswered prayer, while the sestet reveals suffering as internalized judgment.

    Octave: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
    What hours, O what black hours we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
    And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

    With witness I speak this. But where I say
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
    To dearest him that lives alas! away.

    The octave opens abruptly: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” The speaker awakens, yet awakening does not bring light. The word fell suggests something savage, cruel, or deadly, as though darkness itself were an attacking force. 

    Day has failed to arrive, not externally but internally. The speaker’s consciousness remains trapped in night. This darkness is not merely the absence of light but a palpable weight that can be felt.

    The second line intensifies this experience. The repetition emphasizes exhaustion. These hours are not ordinary; they are “black hours,” heavy with dread.   The speaker addresses his own heart directly, asking it to remember what it has seen and where it has wandered, suggesting a night filled with disturbing thoughts, memories, or spiritual visions that cannot be escaped even in sleep.

    The line “And more must, in yet longer light’s delay” extends the suffering into the future. Relief is postponed; light is delayed. The speaker anticipates further endurance without comfort. The octave has thus established a defining theme: suffering continues; the speaker is conscious of the fact that it is also unavoidable.

    In the second quatrain, the speaker asserts his testimony.  He is not exaggerating or indulging emotion; instead, he is claiming authority as one who has endured. Yet immediately, time expands. When he says “hours,” he means “years,” and beyond that, “life.” What began as a single night becomes a metaphor for an entire existence marked by anguish. The darkness is not episodic but continually defining.

    The lament itself takes the form of “cries countless.” These cries are compared to missives sent to a loved one far away.   The metaphor is striking. The speaker believes his cries are addressed to God, “dearest him,” yet they receive no reply. Like letters that never reach their destination, these prayers feel wasted, unheard, and perhaps unopened. God is known to be living, yet distant.

    The emotional force of the octave lies in this tension: the speaker continues to cry out, continues to bear witness, even while believing those cries go unanswered.  The speaker is not revealing disbelief but instead he is demonstrating faith that yet suffers. 

    The speaker holds no compunction to deny God’s existence, a suffering humanity often is wont to do; instead, he suffers under God’s silence. The speaker therefore is expressing despair not as rebellion but as endurance under abandonment. The night continues, the cries continue, and the speaker remains awake within it.

    Sestet: “I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree”

    I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
    Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

    Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
    The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

    The sestet takes a decisive inward turn. Where the octave emphasized time and unanswered cries, the sestet focuses on the body and self as the site of punishment.  The speaker does not merely feel bitterness; he is bitterness. Gall, a bitter substance associated with suffering and poison, suggests spiritual nausea. Heartburn implies a burning from within, a pain generated internally rather than inflicted from without.

    The speaker attributes this condition to “God’s most deep decree.” This suffering is not accidental or random. It is permitted, even ordained. The bitterness is something the speaker must taste, yet the shocking revelation follows: “my taste was me.” The self (soul) becomes both the instrument and the substance of suffering. There is no external punishment necessary; identity itself is the affliction.

    The line “Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse” intensifies the embodiment of despair.  The curse is not simply symbolic; it saturates the physical body. Bones, flesh, and blood—the fundamental elements of life—are all implicated. Suffering is total, leaving no refuge within the soul. The speaker’s claims suggest a complete inhabitation or incarnation of pain, as though despair has become structural.

    The metaphor of fermentation is created in the line “Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours.” Yeast is normally a source of growth and life, but here it produces sourness. The spirit works upon itself destructively. The self generates its own decay. This image reinforces the idea that suffering is self-contained, inescapable, but continuous.

    In the final lines, the speaker broadens his vision.  He recognizes his condition as a foretaste of damnation. The lost are punished not by external flames but by being trapped within themselves. Their scourge is to be “their sweating selves.” The speaker identifies with this fate, acknowledging that he already experiences something like it, though he believes theirs will be worse.

    The sestet ends without consolation. There is no resolution, no light breaking through. Instead, the poem concludes with recognition and endurance. The speaker understands the nature of suffering more clearly, but understanding does not remove it. The sonnet closes in grim clarity rather than hope.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Habit of Perfection”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – Inspirational Jesuits

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Habit of Perfection”

    Father Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Habit of Perfection” dramatizes the importance of silencing and stilling each of the five senses in order to advance in the spiritual realm.

    Introduction with Text of “The Habit of Perfection”

    The title “The Habit of Perfection” of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem features a pun on the term “habit.” As a monk, the poet had accepted the garb of the monastic, sometimes called a habit. Of course, the ordinary meaning of common routine also functions fully.

    About the importance of silence, Paramahansa Yogananda has averred, “What joy awaits discovery in the silence behind the portals of your mind no human tongue can tell” (Spiritual Diary).

    Jesuit Priest Gerard Manley Hopkins concurs with the Indian guru’s claim. Father Hopkins’ poem dramatizes the bliss of silence in seven rimed quatrains, each with the rime scheme, ABAB, featuring his famous sprung rhythm and inscape techniques.  The devotee/speaker commands each of his senses to cease their normal functioning, in order that his soul may meditate in holy silence and commune with the Divine.

    The Habit of Perfection

    Elected Silence, sing to me
    And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
    Pipe me to pastures still and be
    The music that I care to hear.

    Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
    It is the shut, the curfew sent
    From there where all surrenders come
    Which only makes you eloquent.

    Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
    And find the uncreated light:
    This ruck and reel which you remark
    Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

    Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
    Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
    The can must be so sweet, the crust
    So fresh that come in fasts divine!

    Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
    Upon the stir and keep of pride,
    What relish shall the censers send
    Along the sanctuary side!

    O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
    That want the yield of plushy sward,
    But you shall walk the golden street
    And you unhouse and house the Lord.

    And, Poverty, be thou the bride
    And now the marriage feast begun,
    And lily-coloured clothes provide
    Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

    Reading

    Commentary on “The Habit of Perfection”

    Father Hopkins’ poem “The Habit of Perfection” dramatizes the importance of silencing and stilling each of the five senses in order to advance spiritually to experience union with the Divine Reality.

    First Quatrain: Devotee of the Spiritual Path

    Elected Silence, sing to me
    And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
    Pipe me to pastures still and be
    The music that I care to hear.

    The speaker reveals himself to be a devotee on the spiritual path, as he converses with “Elected Silence.” The devotee chooses silence as the place where inner awareness starts, remembering the biblical injunction, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 King James Version).

    The speaker metaphorically likens his Elected Silence to music, capable of singing to him and beating upon his eardrum.  This silence “pipe[s him] to pastures” in the mind which he wants to still. He, therefore, asks silence to be “the music that [he cares] to hear.”

    Second Quatrain:  Commanding the Senses

    Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
    It is the shut, the curfew sent
    From there where all surrenders come
    Which only makes you eloquent.

    As an adjunct to the auditory sense, speaking or moving the lips must cease as well as catching sounds with the ear; thus, the speaker bids his lips to remain “lovely-dumb.”  He tells his lips to form no sounds, stressing that the eloquent speech of the devotee is in his surrender to the Divine. The devotee must remain silent in order to hear the voice of Divinity.

    Third Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Sight

    Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
    And find the uncreated light:
    This ruck and reel which you remark
    Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

    The speaker then bids his eyes remain closed. He commands them to seek “double dark” beyond which they can encounter the “uncreated light.” In their seeking, the eyes may experience flashes of unearthly light that “[c]oils, keeps, and teases simple sight.”  But the devotee’s goal is to become so calm that the physical eyes cease to catch mere glimpses, while the single spiritual eye becomes operational.

    Fourth Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Taste

    Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
    Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
    The can must be so sweet, the crust
    So fresh that come in fasts divine!

    The speaker/devotee orders his sense of taste to cease its intrusion upon the soul. He specifically commands his taste buds not to crave wine.  The sense of taste must be subdued by fasting, wherein the urge for food and drink become swallowed up in the bliss of Divine communion.

    Fifth Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Smell

    Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
    Upon the stir and keep of pride,
    What relish shall the censers send
    Along the sanctuary side!

    The sense of smell accompanies the act of breathing, and in meditation, breathing slows until it stops in deepest awareness of the Divine Essence.  The speaker commands his nose by asserting the premise that it functions through a sense of pride, which is damaging to the humbleness necessary for Divine awareness.

    Sixth Quatrain:  Calming the Sense of Touch

    O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
    That want the yield of plushy sward,
    But you shall walk the golden street
    And you unhouse and house the Lord.

    The speaker then promises his greedy hands and feet, which desire softness and comfort, that they will be rewarded to walk the golden street, if they cooperate in sacrificing their worldly comforts for heavenly ones.

    Seventh Quatrain:  Union of Soul and Divine

    And, Poverty, be thou the bride
    And now the marriage feast begun,
    And lily-coloured clothes provide
    Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

    In the final quatrain, the speaker alludes to the Christ’s command not to become overly conscious about one’s clothes: 

    And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  (Matthew 6:28-29 KJV)

    The speaker avers that taking Poverty as his bride, he will enjoy all the comforts of heaven. As a monastic, the speaker has taken a vow of poverty or simplicity because he is seeking treasures not afforded by the material world. 

    As he silences and calms all the senses, his true marriage feast begins, his marriage or union with the Divine Over-Soul, in Whom all worthwhile treasures are acquired and all worthy goals are achieved.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley  Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” is an eleven-line curtal sonnet, dedicated to honoring and praising God for the special beauty of His creation.  Father Hopkins coined the term “curtal” to label his eleven-line sonnets.

    Introduction and Text of “Pied Beauty”

    The speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem/hymn “Pied Beauty” offers a tribute to the Creator for all things natural and human inspired, with special emphasis on things that are multi-colored, dotted, striped, or patterned in ingenious ways.  The poem employs Father Hopkins’ famed sprung rhythm and unique rime scheme: ABCABCDBCDC.  

    The poem is an eleven-line sonnet called a curtal, a term which Father Hopkins coined to describe the form he employed in certain of his poems, including “Pied Beauty.”  While the speaker emphasizes beauty by contrasting things that are widely touted as unpleasant yet possess a certain aura of unique loveliness, he ultimately is affirming that God has made all of creation to reflect various styles of beauty.

    Thus, the speaker begins by giving all “glory” to God for all these created things, and he concludes by insisting that God be praised for giving humankind these many patterned objects of beauty.   

    God and beauty are being weighed in special terms as the speaker creates in his hymn a drama of oppositional tension that results in the creation of balance and harmony.    Through appreciation and praise of God for His gifts, humankind learns that balance and harmony in order to complete life’s goals and purposes. 

    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 áll trádes, 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.

    Recitation of “Pied Beauty”

    Commentary on “Pied Beauty”

    Father Hopkins’ poem remarkably enlists several synonyms for the important title term “pied.”  Those synonyms are dappled, couple-colour, brinded (archaic form of brindled), stipple, and freckled.   All of those terms refer to multi-color or dotted patterns that so often appear in nature, that this observant human heart finds divinely inspired.

    The poem is, therefore, a hymn honoring the Supreme Creator of all that exists.  The piece offers gratitude that the Heavenly Father-Creator has fashioned His world to provide delight for His children.

    First Movement:  A Pattern of Gratitude

    Glory be to God for dappled things –

    The speaker begins by glorifying Creator-God for having effected His world to include objects that are multi-spotted and multi-colored.  While the speaker undoubtedly offers God all glory to everything in creation, he also glorifies his Creator for not only things but also events.  The act of creation remains of particular interest.

    The speaker appears to be concentrating on a certain style and pattern that the Almighty has chosen to bestow on certain of His creatures and things.  And this devout speaker remains most appreciative of those patterns.  Thus, the glory, the honor, and the achievement of God have infused this speaker’s heart and mind to express gratitude.

    Second Movement:  Examples of All Things Dappled

    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 áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

    The speaker then offers examples of those “dappled” things for which he is offering glory to God. He appreciates the sky that ofttimes appears as multi-colored as a spotted bovine.  The speaker is thankful also for the patterns that are dotted over the bodies of “trout that swim.”  These stippling patterns resemble small mole-like roses as they decorate the skin of those fish.

    This observant, devout speaker also adores the beauty of fallen chestnuts that resemble freshly set-ablaze fire coals on a grate or in a stove.   He also uses the “finches’ wings” to exemplify his appreciation for things “dappled.”  The wings of finches are often layered strips.  The speaker then widens his example to include even the “[l]andscape” or the farmers’ fields that the farmer has “plotted and pieced” in order to plough and “fold” or allow to lie “fallow.”  

    He finds those patterns to be offering the glory that all “dappled” things offer; thus, he honors them by mentioning them as an example. In fact, every commercial endeavor deserves a nod along with the instruments, their tools, which he refers to as “gear,” “tackle,” and “trim.”

    Third Movement:  The Spice of Variety

     All things counter, original, spare, strange;

    In the second stanza, beginning with the third movement, the speaker shifts from simple  spotted, multi-colored things to everything remaining that runs against expectation, or that is original and unique, or things that seem simple, and things that appear odd.

    Because creation seems to offer an infinite number of styles, patterns, and ways of being, the speaker now wishes to praise God and glorify the Divine Maker by recognizing the Creator’s penchant for variety. 

    If the old adage “variety is the spice of life” possesses any truth, then certainly the Heavenly Father-God is responsible for the creation of those spices.  This speaker thus widens his scope for gratitude.

    Fourth Movement:  Things That Change

     Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
          With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

    The speaker then offers further elucidation for the other components that make up his glossary of things that deserve attention and appreciation because of their having been offered to humankind by the Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Creator of the cosmos.

    So the speaker reports that all things, beings, creatures that possess the quality of fickleness or changeability belong to his list of things that honor and give glory to God.  Even “freckled” things, of which no one can define the origin, belong to this category.

    Those “fickle” and “freckled” things all have several qualities in common; thus, they may exist and behave with speed or move measuredly.   They may possess the opposite flavors of sweetness or sourness.  Some may also reflect light blazingly while others remain muted and subdued.

    Regardless of the unique qualities, they are all part of the Blessèd Creator’s offerings to His children for their pleasure or for their edification or to light whatever pathway they are destined to follow.

    Fifth Movement:  That Which Does not Change

    He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                    Praise him.

    The speaker then concludes with a command—”Praise him.”  In the beginning, he made it clear that he was offering all glory to God for the things He has given through creation. Now he offers his stern command, but before that command, he offers the reason that such praise is due Him. 

    The Father of all this beauty continues, and although He Himself is “past change” or without the necessity to change Himself, He continues to offer through creation a beauty that is many faceted, multi-colored, multi-stippled, and brindled. And all things remain on a spectrum that humankind cannot duplicate but is surely obligated to honor, appreciate, and glorify in the name of Father God.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur”

    Despite the “smudge” and “smear” from some human activity, the speaker is offering assurance that the Creator’s blessings and restoration of Planet Earth remain in effect through the “grandeur” of that Creative Force-God.  Instead of instilling fear of earthly events, he encourages worship.

    Introduction with Text of  “God’s Grandeur”

    Father Gerard Manley Hopkins’ motivation to imitate Spirit (God) prompts him to craft his poems in forms, as Spirit creates entities in forms—from rocks to animals to plants to the human body. 

    Father Hopkins often employs the sonnet form. “God’s Grandeur” is a sonnet—fourteen lines, more similar to the Petrarchan than the Elizabethan. The first eight lines (octave) present an issue; then, the remaining six lines (sestet) address that issue.  

    Father Hopkins’ rime scheme is typically ABBAABBA CDCDCD, which also resembles the Petrarchan rime scheme in the octave. He employs iambic pentameter but varies from spondee to trochee.  Father Hopkins’ called his unique form “sprung rhythm.”

    God’s Grandeur

    The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    Reading:  

    Commentary on “God’s Grandeur”

    Decrying the “smudge” and “smear” from human activity, the speaker asserts that despite humankind’s penchant for defiling nature, the Creator continues to bless and restore the world—a message that flies in the face of climate alarmists.

    However, in today’s smudged, postmodern world, one pays a price for criticizing climate alarmists who have replaced faith in the Creator with constant agitation for political ascendency.

    The Octave:  Pantheistic View of God

    The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

    The speaker in this Petrarchan sonnet sees God everywhere: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”  His soul is convinced, but his senses tell him that people do not behave as if this were true: “Why do men then not reck his rod?” 

    Not only do men, i.e. humankind, not heed the Divine, they also seem content to exist in darkness from where they spread gloom on the environment.   The speaker contends that whole generations of humanity have trampled the earth, defiling nature as they apply their systems of “trade.”

    The speaker is dramatizing Father Hopkins’ sense that human beings have become more interested in materialistic gain and possessions than in celebrating the glory of a loving, merciful, Heavenly Father. 

    The Sestet:  God’s Gifts Cannot Be Exhausted

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    The octave has presented the issue: humankind is oblivious to God’s gifts and thus defiles them.  The sestet addresses the issue: despite indifference to the Creator, humankind cannot exhaust the gifts that the Creator bestows, because nature continues to renew itself through the agency of the Divine.  

    Thus, a “dearest freshness” continues to assert itself, despite the dirty ways of humankind.  Humankind may disregard God’s grandeur, but everything renews despite human activity.

    The speaker’s faith leaves him no room for doubt, because that faith has infused in him the intuition that the “Holy Ghost” is always watching over humankind, the children of Spirit-God, somewhat like a mother bird watches over her little flock.

    The Holy Ghost (Divine Mother) will ever mother humanity—Her little birds. Father Hopkins’ mystical insight brings him to the faith that throbs in his soul—in his “inscape,” his unique term for his inner landscape. 

    The Mystical Poet and God’s Creation

    And “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (KJV, John 1:1).  This line speaks gently but firmly to the inner ear of mystically inclined poets.  

    As originally determined, a poet is a word craftsman, and when the poet of genuine faith builds with words, he is imitating God, taking his discourse out of dogma and into true spirituality.  The form of “God’s Grandeur” closely resembles Father Hopkins’ other poems. 

    In “The Windhover,” the rime scheme is the same as that of “God’s Grandeur.” The same is true for “The Lantern out of Doors,” “Hurrahing in Harvest,” and “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”

    Father Hopkins sonnets celebrate Spirit and continue the search for a deeper relationship with the Mastercraftsman (God). Occasionally, as he structures his sonnets, they produce an order that further marks a style uniquely his own.

    Readers do not encounter any structure resembling “Stirred for a birds, the achieve of, the mastery of the thing” in a Thomas Hardy or A. E. Housman poem—or that of any other poet—the uniqueness of Father Hopkins is so firmly established. 

    Also, a typical line of Father Hopkins is “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east,” which contains the example of his meter and content.

    Divine Melancholy 

    The melancholy experienced by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins is of divine origin. The ameliorist in Thomas Hardy produces in his poems a different sort of melancholy.    Father Hopkins has faith; Hardy has hope.  One may deem Hardy spiritually adrift on the sea of humankind’s woe, even when he sings, 

    I talk as if the things were born
    With sense to work its mind;
    Yet it is but one mask of many worn
    By the Great Face behind.

    Referring to the veiled nature of God, Hardy seems to bemoan it rather than celebrate it, as Father Hopkins does.   Housman is preoccupied with endings. He says, “And since to look at things in bloom / Fifty springs are little room” and “sharp the link of life will snap.” 

    Of course, all poets are concerned with endings, but each poet in his work will treat those concerns in distinctive ways, according to their levels of understanding and faith.   Hardy, Housman, and many other poets remain earthbound looking for answers to ultimate questions among the various outlets for human intellectual expression.  And their search is a vital one for humankind.

    However, Father Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur” along with the rest of his canon affords the reader the experience of hearing beautiful singing loud and sweet a poet’s song of the love for the Divine.  

    Father Hopkins’ faith set him free to pursue and express Divine Love, instead of endless searching for that something-else that the faithless heart craves as it laments the trammels of Earth.