I ran into the ever-lovely Professor Hoeckley the other day and we started chatting about this and that. I told her that I was taking a course in Astronomy and that I was really struggling to grasp the subject matter. At first I had found the vast expanses of the heavens a wondrous thing to behold, but after it had been reduced down to rigid formulas and equations, I felt its splendor dim as the light of reason spread over it. Professor Hoeckley, in her great wisdom and colossal compassion, consoled me by offering to send me a little Hopkins poem that might make the universe glorious once more. Genius.
LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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