The Lantern out of Doors

1877

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,That interests our eyes. And who goes there?I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty brightIn mould or mind or what not else makes rare:They rain against our much-thick and marsh airRich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: windWhat most I may eye after, be in at the endI cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amendThere, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

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

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