Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves

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Title:     Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins [More Titles by Hopkins]

EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, | vaulty, voluminous, . . stupendous

Evening strains to be time's vast, | womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.

Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, | her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height

Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, | stars principal, overbend us,

Fire-featuring heaven. For earth | her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-

tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self in self steeped and pashed--quite

Disremembering, dismembering | all now. Heart, you round me right

With: Our evening is over us; our night | whelms, whelms, and will end us.

Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,

Ever so black on it. Our tale, our oracle! | Let life, waned, ah let life wind

Off her once skeined stained veined variety | upon, all on two spools; part, pen, pack

Now her all in two flocks, two folds--black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind

But these two; ware of a world where but these | two tell, each off the other; of a rack

Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe-and shelterless, | thoughts against thoughts in groans grind.

[The end]
Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem: Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves

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