Make mercy in all of us, out of us all

                                4

                 I am sóft síft

              In an hourglass―at the wall

           Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,

              And it crowds and it combs to the fall;

       I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,

       But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall

           Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein

Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.

                                    5

                  I kiss my hand

               To the stars, lovely-asunder

            Starlight, wafting him out of it; and

                 Glow, glory in thunder;

         Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:

         Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,

             His mystery must be instressed, stressed;

For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.

                                    6

                 Not out of his bliss

              Springs the stress felt

           Nor first from heaven (and few know this)

                  Swings the stroke dealt―

         Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,

         That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt―

                  But it rides time like riding a river

(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).

                                     7

                It dates from day

             Of his going in Galilee;

          Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;

                  Manger, maiden’s knee;

       The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;

       Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,

                  Though felt before, though in high flood yet―

What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,

                                    8

                Is out with it! Oh,

             We lash with the best or worst

           Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe

                  Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,

        Gush! ―flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,

        Brim, in a flash, full! ―Hither then, last or first,

                  To hero of Calvary, Christ’s feet―

Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it―men go.

                                    9

                Be adored among men,

             God, three-numberèd form;

           Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,

                  Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm.

         Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,

         Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;

                  Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:

Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.

                                     10

                  With an anvil-ding

               And with fire in him forge thy will

           Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring

                     Through him, melt him but master him still:

        Whether át ónce, as once at a crash Paul,

        Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,

                    Make mercy in all of us, out of us all

Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.

                        Part the Second

                                       11

             ‘Some find me a sword; some

             The flange and the rail; flame,

          Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum,

              And storms bugle his fame.

    But wé dréam we are rooted in earth―Dust!

    Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,

          Wave with the meadow, forget that there must

The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

                                        12

               On Saturday sailed from Bremen,

               American-outward-bound,

           Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,

                Two hundred souls in the round―

    O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing

    The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned;

            Yet díd the dark side of the bay of thy blessing

Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?

                                         13

               Into the snows she sweeps,

               Hurling the haven behind,

           The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,

               For the infinite air is unkind,

    And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,

    Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;

            Wiry and white-fiery and whírlwind-swivellèd snow

Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.

                                         14

                She drove in the dark to leeward,

                She struck―not a reef or a rock

            But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her

                Dead to the Kentish Knock;

    And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel:

    The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;

            And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel

Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.

                                          15

                  Hope had grown grey hairs,

                  Hope had mourning on,

            Trenched with tears, carved with cares,

                  Hope was twelve hours gone;

    And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day

    Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,

             And lives at last were washing away:

To the shrouds they took, ―they shook in the hurling and horrible airs.

                                          16

                   One stirred from the rigging to save

                   The wild woman-kind below,

             With a rope’s end round the man, handy and brave―

….    ~Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, pp. 11-113