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,
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.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
* * *
How to bend our words to apprehend the movements of the world? The bouncing, consonant stutter of the wind, the end rhyme of its rise and fall. The abrupt rise in exclamation and suddenly smooth turn of wing upon the sky. The intensely grateful waver of flame re-awakened by these gifts.
The heart held in despair or tedium,
when given reason,
leaps up with such sublime intensity that all the headwind in the world
is nothing to its joyous grace. Though not simply erased, the winds
are taken up and transmuted into a part of that joy. With something of a
falcon's heart we come by the means to understand, accept, and embrace
this inevitable turbulence, becoming nimble and light enough to float
upon it unbowed. The gift of this endlessly beautiful world.
* * *
*grainy, grey day pictures are mine, .gif is not*
