The Fredösphere

In his Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor reminds us that today is the birthday of Gerard Manley Hopkins, now a favorite poet of mine thanks to a tip from a commenter to this blog.  Hopkins died at age 44, which serves as an unwelcome goad to anyone reading this who might happen to be that exact age ... like ... um ... me, for example.  Today I honor Hopkins by selecting a Friday Poem, a feature of this blog which has been reliable only in its extreme inconstancy.  I make no claim to understand the following, but the ring of its words is bright.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;   
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells   
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s   
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;   
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;   
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,   
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.   
 
Í say móre: the just man justices;   
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—   
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,   
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his   
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.