dots-menu
×

Home  »  69. ‘The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns’

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

69. ‘The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns’

THE SHEPHERD’S brow, fronting forked lightning, owns

The horror and the havoc and the glory

Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story

Of just, majestical, and giant groans.

But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;

Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary

Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori—

What bass is our viol for tragic tones?

He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;

And, blazoned in however bold the name,

Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.

And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,

That … in smooth spoons spy life’s masque mirrored: tame

My tempests there, my fire and fever fussy.