Living Wittily

“A billion times told lovelier…” Gerard Manley Hopkins poem to Christ

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Seeing, really seeing, isn't as easy as looking. I like the older word "behold", its sense of recognising the isness and reality of that which we see, and holding what we see in our attention, paying attention, a phrase that says exactly what is required to see, the cost of attentiveness.

Gerard Manley Hopkins saw, beheld, paid attention, acknowledged and recognised the isness of what he saw around him. He was often thought eccentric, odd, introverted – but perhaps the oddity was due more to that propensity for attentiveness, his instinctive perception of the reality and value of the other, and the Other who was encountered within and beyond the self.

Anyway, I've been reading some Hopkins and it so happens there is a kestrel family along the road between here and Aberdeen and one or other can be seen hovering at just about telegraph pole height, defying gravity, reflecting sunlight, moving with grace, precision and beauty. It reminded me of Hopkins poem.

 

The Windhover
 
 
To Christ our Lord
 
 
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,         5
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
 
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion         10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
 
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

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