Thank you...

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*