HumanitiesWeb.org - Editor's Selection of Poems (The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns) by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Editor's Selection of Poems
The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns   
The horror and the havoc and the glory   
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story   
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.   
But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;          
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary   
Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori—   
What bass is our viol for tragic tones?   
He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;   
And, blazoned in however bold the name,   
Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.   
And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,   
That ... in smooth spoons spy life’s masque mirrored: tame   
My tempests there, my fire and fever fussy. 
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