Beauty.

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-color 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 plow;

And all trades, 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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Be.

WHAT I DO IS ME —FOR THAT I CAME

for Gerard Manley Hopkins

What I do is me—for that I came.

What I do is me!

For that I came into the world!

So said Gerard;

So said that gentle Manley Hopkins.

In his poetry and prose he saw the Fates that chose

Him in genetics, then set him free to find his way

Among the sly electric printings in his blood.

God thumbprints thee! he said.

Within your hour of birth

He touches hand to brow, He whorls and softly stamps

The ridges and the symbols of His soul above your eyes!

But in that selfsame hour, full born and shouting

Shocked pronouncements of one's birth,

In mirrored gaze of midwife, mother, doctor

See that Thumbprint fade and fall away in flesh

So, lost, erased, you seek a lifetime's days for it

And dig deep to find the sweet instructions there.

Put by when God first circuited and printed thee to

life:

"Go hence! do this! do that! do yet another thing!

This self is yours! Be it!"

And what is that?! you cry at hearthing breast,

Is there no rest? No, only journeying to be yourself.

And even as the Birthmark vanishes, in seashell ear

Now fading to a sigh, His last words send you in the

world:

"Not mother, father, grandfather are you.

Be not another. Be the self I signed you in your blood.

I swarm your flesh with you. Seek that.

And, finding, be what no one else can be.

I leave you gifts of Fate most secret; find no other's Fate,

For if you do, no grave is deep enough for your despair

No country far enough to hide your loss.

I circumnavigate each cell in you

Your merest molecule is right and true.

Look there for destinies indelible and fine

And rare.

Ten thousand futures share your blood each instant;

Each drop of blood a cloned electric twin of you.

In merest wound on hand read replicas of what I

planned

and knew

Before your birth, then hid it in your heart.

No part of you that does not snug and hold and hide

The self that you will be if faith abide.

What you do is thee. For that I gave you birth.

Be that. So be the only you that's truly you on Earth."

Dear Hopkins. Gentle Manley. Rare Gerard. Fine

name.

What we do is us. Because of you. For that we came.

Ray Bradbury

Hopkins, We Three Kings of Orient Are

The Kings College Choir performs ...

Favor.

If you've never read or seen 84 Charring Cross Road, do yourself a favor.

Excellent.

An excellent movie ...

Laugh.

Sweet.

van Gogh, Avenue of Poplars near Nuenen in Autumn, 1884

BINSEY POPLARS

felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, 
  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, 
  All felled, felled, are all felled; 
    Of a fresh and following folded rank 
                Not spared, not one 
                That dandled a sandalled 
         Shadow that swam or sank 
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 
         
  O if we but knew what we do 
         When we delve or hew — 
     Hack and rack the growing green! 
          Since country is so tender 
     To touch, her being só slender, 
     That, like this sleek and seeing ball 
     But a prick will make no eye at all, 
     Where we, even where we mean 
                 To mend her we end her, 
            When we hew or delve: 
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. 
  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve 
     Strokes of havoc unselve 
           The sweet especial scene, 
     Rural scene, a rural scene, 
     Sweet especial rural scene. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Rare.

A definitive scene from 84 Charing Cross Road demonstrates proof of that rare instance when the movie surpasses its enjoyable book ...

Elsewhere.

You know what I am doing, Miss Kenton? I am placing my thoughts elsewhere while you chatter away.

Longed.

Hopkins, Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior, 1869

Imagine yourself part of 1869 London society, entering the brand new galleries at Burlington House, and viewing landscapes of the English countryside, portraits of nobles or other important persons, scenes of hunting, horses, seascapes and sailing ships, or great military battles—and then seeing these three canoes paddled by exotically dressed voyageurs heading into Lake Superior’s misty unknown. It caused comment. The Prince of Wales (future Edward VII) liked this picture so much that he purchased a large drawing that hung at Marlborough House, no doubt as a reminder of the canoe fêtes during his 1860 official visit to Canada. He remembered meeting the artist, Frances Anne Hopkins, at a luncheon in his honor on Ile Dorval.

The morning mist of Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior may have seemed only romantic atmosphere to the London audiences, but Lake Superior travelers know it well, and it evokes a sensation of damp chill. This masterful style of composition, at once artistically appealing and totally accurate, is typical of Hopkins’ best work. Lake Superior’s fog has already blurred the two canoes ahead and even the bowman of the last canoe. Despite the potential danger this exact moment is beautiful, and British art fans no doubt longed to take Mrs. Hopkins’ seat in the canoe.

CONNECT

Peace.

Hopkins, Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior, 1869

The Red River Voyageur

Out and in the river is winding
The links of its long, red chain,
Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins,-
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins.

Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.

And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.

Is it the clang of wild-geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the voice of the north-wind
The tones of a far-off bell?

The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.

The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain,
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain!

Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north-winds blow,
And thus upon life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.

And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,
And our eyes grow dim with watching
And our hearts faint at the oar,

Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace!

John Greenleaf Whittier