An Excerpt from Hopkins: The Mystic Poets, preface by Thomas Ryan

This volume in "The Mystic Poets" presents the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Christian mystic. Here is a poem on the impact of the resurrection.

That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt
         forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs
         they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash,
         wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace,
         lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes,
         wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rutpeel
         parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust;
         stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil
         there
Footfretted in it. Million-fueled, nature's bonfire
         burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-
         selved spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is
         gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous
         dark
Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that
         shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out;
         nor mark
                  Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the
         Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days,
         dejection.
                  Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal
         trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave
         but ash:
                  In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I
         am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood,
         immortal diamond,
                  Is immortal diamond.

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