Poem: “Hurrahing in Harvest,” Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise 

Around; up above, what wind-stalks! What lovely behaviour 

Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier 

Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across the skies! 

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, 

Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; 

And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a 

Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies? 

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder 

Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! – 

These things, these things were here and but the beholder 

Wanting; which two when they once meet, 

The heart rears wings bold and bolder 

And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.