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Gerard Manley Hopkins

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That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection


Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- 
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches. 
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches, 
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. 
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare 
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches 
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches 
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there 
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. 
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark 
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! 
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark 
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone 
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark 
                            Is any of him at all so stark 
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, 
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. 
                            Across my foundering deck shone 
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash 
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: 
                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and 
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, 
                            Is immortal diamond. 

D. H. Lawrence

 from Pansies THE WHITE HORSE The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on and the horse looks at him in silence. They are s...