Gerard Manley Hopkins opens with a dizzying, joyful catalogue of natural energy: clouds racing like rag-tag revellers, wind scouring the land, light lacing through trees. All of it is ‘nature’s bonfire’—a Heraclitean flux of ceaseless change. But then the mood darkens. The speaker grieves that even ‘man, how fast his firedint… is gone’. Death wipes away every trace, and we are all drowned in an enormous dark. Just as despair seems final, the poem pivots: ‘Enough! the Resurrection.’ The heart’s clarion cry announces a complete reversal. In a flash, at the last trumpet, our fragile, matchwood selves—this ‘Jack, joke, poor potsherd’—will become immortal diamond, fused with Christ. The mood swings from wild delight through sorrow to a triumphant, almost startled joy at that hard, dazzling paradox.
That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection — Summary
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches. Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair. Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature's bonfire burns on. But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, ' joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.