That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection

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Title:     That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins [More Titles by Hopkins]

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 in 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-fueled, | nature's bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selved 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 Resur-
rection,

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.

[The end]
Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem: That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection

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