The
Starlight Night
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, alms, 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.
Source
of the text – Gerard Manley Hopkins: The
Major Works, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Catherine
Phillips. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002, pp. 128-29.
Bourguignomicon: Giddy, alliterated,
sprung, assonant, tightly-rhymed, over-exclaimed, this sonnet figures the night
sky as barn walls with heaven beyond.
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