When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it? O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite, That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.
Four Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Song Cycle by Trevor Hold (1939 - 2004)
?. Peace  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "Peace", appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]?. Thou art indeed just, Lord  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build -- but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), no title, appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
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The poem is headed with the following quote: Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
?. Pied Beauty  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Glory be to God for dappled things -- For skies of couple-colour as a [brinded]1 cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and [plough]2. [And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.]3 All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "Pied Beauty", written 1877, appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FIN Finnish (Suomi) (Erkki Pullinen) , "Monimuotoista kauneutta", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 sometimes modernized to "brindled"
2 Mitchell: "trim"
2 omitted by Mitchell
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
?. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; 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 do is me: for that I came. Í say móre: the just man justices; Kéeps gráce: 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.
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), no title, appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]Total word count: 410