GMH Mondays

Every Monday, I'd like to begin sharing with you a poem from one of my all-time favorites, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm not even going to start by describing it. If you've read it already, you know, and if you haven't read it, start now.

The Windhover
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,
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
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.

What continually astounds me about Gerard Manley Hopkins is the familiarity of his rhythms; aside from some odd vocabulary, he writes in a way that feels almost natural. It's not that his style matches how anybody talks these days, but there's something nearly contemporary in his writing, in the way that word rhythm and alliteration foreground metrical organization. Speaking of which, to anyone who ever said the sonnet form is restrictive: clearly you just aren't trying hard enough, because THAT was actually a sonnet.