Literature/Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnet, dedicated to Christ, on a kestrel riding the morning air.
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his ridingOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, and stridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wingIn his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and glidingRebuffed the big wind. My heart in hidingStirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, hereBuckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billionTimes told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillionShine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.