Have you heard of G.M. Hopkins?

[johnlennon30]

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest and poet. He's practically the Father of Modern Poetry, some people say. His poems were only published in 1918 after his death because, as a priest, he believed his life should be dedicated to the greater glory of God (Ad majorem Dei gloriam, as the Jesuits say) and not of his own self. He invented sprung rhythm.


Spring and Fall
By G.M. Hopkins, S.J.

to a young child


MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

[mortalterror]

I like The Wreck of the Deutschland better.

[angelmay]

Heh well I'm studying Pied Beauty right now...any thoughts?

[johnlennon30]

The poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" was written in 1876 about the SS Deutschland incident in 1875. Hopkins wrote it:

"To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns, exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875"

The SS Deutschland sank on 5:00 of 6 December 1875 before the steam paddle Liverpool could help the remaining passengers on 7 December. A total of 157 passengers died, including five Fransican nuns of the Salzkotten Sisters of Sacred Heart of Jesus.


" THOU mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee."

[johnlennon30]

Pied Beauty
Poem 13, Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889). Poems. 1918. Edited by Robert Bridges.

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.

This is a poem giving praise to God for all of His works. In it the word "plough"
has its rhyme in the second verse of the poem. This style is also used by my compatriot the Filipino poet Cirilo F. Bautista.


"At times you pine and pine for beauty gone -
Ah, never take the same courage, mon ami,
Wisdom and the past are never one.

But learn to distrust language that we
In constant dreams deem the only fact,
Kill it in seduction or heraldry"
-"Addressed to Himself", Cirilo F. Bautista, 1968

[blazeofglory]

He was a spiritual poet and I have read plenty of him[/U]