Gerald Manley Hopkins is one of my favorite poets and as summer draws to a close here in the Northern Hemisphere it is good to reflect on prayers like this as both a tribute to the season that has past and a preparation for the season that is to come.
HURRAHING IN HARVEST
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
What Is Your Response?
What have you most enjoyed about the summer season this year?
What are you most looking forward to in the coming season of autumn and harvest, of winter and waiting?
2 comments
Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs was a highlight, as always. And I look forward to harvesting armloads of tomatoes from our church farm to deliver to homeless & low-income families in our area. Plus, sneaking off to New Hampshire to write for a month and watch the colors change! Thanks for the poem.
Sounds like a wonderful summer – wish the Wild Goose Festival was not so far away from us. We would come more frequently.