Poem of the Week

 The Windhover

By Gerard Manley Hopkins (whose birthday is today)

• 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 ecstacy! 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.