As Kingfishers Catch Fire

1877

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;As tumbled over rim in roundy wellsStones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell'sBow 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 hisTo the Father through the features of men's faces.

From Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918), via the English Wikisource transcription.

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