As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The title of this blog "myself it speaks" is a phrase borrowed from one of THE great poems - "As kingfishers catch fire" - by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Written while preparing for ordination at St Beuno's College in North Wales, this poem (among several others from the same time) reveal Hopkins at his "peak" - full of confidence and conviction, certain of the beauty and joy of God's creation and assured of Christ's presence.

So, why choose "myself it speaks" as the title for the blog?  How is it possible for a poem written by a refined, Victorian Jesuit to resonate with this dour and very skeptical Scot!  It’s the syntax, the cadence, the images -they are unique, so very different. It’s the challenge.  It’s the hint of a “kindred spirit”. For many years, I was drawn into Hopkins life and poems slowly coming to grips with his intense individuality   This poem was my point-of-entry into his poetic creation. In it, Hopkins crystallizes his understanding of "selving" and "inscape". He illustrates how flashes of light proclaim and reveal what is distinctive and particular about kingfishers and dragonflies . How the sounds of bells evoke their core identity. These visual/aural tropes encapsulate the essence of the objects they describe - their inscape. This characteristic, revealed in an "unwilled self-assertion", projects and pronounces the object's existence.

We (homo sapiens), however, are different. We are not objects, we are actors. We are not insensate, we are aware. We are aware that we are mortal. For us, revealing our inscape (selving) is not completely automatic or unthinking. We can act, we can articulate a purpose, we can frame an intent. We can allow ourselves to speak.

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