Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Excerpt: ... records of my revenge,    On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her-    Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.    What work? what harm 's done? There is no harm done,      none yet;    Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;    To makebelieve my mood was-mock. I might think so    But here, here is a workman from his day's task sweats.    Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,    Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.    So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,    I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy      dark lair; these drops    Never, never, never in their blue banks again.    The woeful, Cradock, the woeful word! Then what,    What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders,      fall,    And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank's edge; then    Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,    It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.    Her eyes, oh and her eyes!    In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,    Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,    In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,    No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down    But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.    Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;    Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven:      O there,    There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances    Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what      first lightning    Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;    I do not and I will not repent, not repent.    The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent    I have like a lion done, lionlike done,    Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,    Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson...