The Sea and the Skylark

On ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench - right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse. Hopkins' work had cutting-edge sensibilities that prefigured the modernist style, though his poems were first published only in 1918, long after his death.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Epithalamion

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

Ribblesdale

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

Fragment

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Caged Skylark

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells -
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Epithalamion

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water- blowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer's sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With ...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Loss of the Eurydice Foundered March 24. 1878

1
The Eurydice - it concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen

2
Where she foundered! One stroke
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
And flockbells off the aerial
Downs' forefalls beat to the burial.

3
For did she pride her, freighted fully, on
Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion? -
Precious passing measure,
Lads and men her lade and treasure.

4
She had come from a cruise, training seamen -
Men, boldboys soon to be men:
Must it, worst weather,
Blast bole and bloom together?

5
No Atlantic squall overwrought her
Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:
Home was hard at hand
And the blow bore from land.

...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Woodlark

Teevo cheetio cheevio chee:
O where, what can thát be?
Weedio-weedio: there again!
So tiny a trickle of sóng-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gréen ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left either right
Anywhere in the súnlight.
Well, after all! Ah but hark -
'I am the little woodlark.
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
To-day the sky is two and two
With white strokes and strains of the blue
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
Round a ring, around a ring
And while I sail (must listen) I sing
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
The skylark is my cousin and he
Is known to men more than me
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
    . . . when the cry within
Says Go on then I go on
Till t...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cheery Beggar

Beyond Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

The motion of that man's heart is fine
Whom want could not make píne, píne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Maidens' song from St. Winefred's Well)

THE LEADEN ECHO

How to keep - is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?

Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding
sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling ...

Gerard Manley Hopkins