My Favourite Poems XII: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Favourite poem, no.12 of a dozen, although really it's no.1. Actually I could have picked 12 of GMH's poems as my favourites, but if there's just one, it has to be this one. I know a windhover is really a kestrel, but I think of this poem whenever I see buzzards playing on thermals above my garden for the sheer hell of it. Or when I'm watching the last flicker of a dying fire.

Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's
Dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shèer plòd makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins