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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Poem 029

Hurrahing in Harvest
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
----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 eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give 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.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins was living in Dublin, Ireland at the time of his death in 1889, where he taught at University College. In retrospect, Hopkins is one of the most important poets of the 19th century, even though most of his poems were not published within his own lifetime. Visit Kingdom Poets to find out more. The "hurrahing" in the title "Hurrahing in Harvest" is thought to derive from Isaiah 55:12.