As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)
A Jesuit priest and teacher, many of Hopkin's poems are religious but in some cases transcend religion. They are beautifully structured and have what Hopkins called sprung rhythm, a term he invented and which is based on Old and Middle English lines with alliteration and rhyme.
POEM: "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
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