The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

• As Kingfishers Catch Fire
• Binsey Poplars
• The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe
• Carrion Comfort
• Duns Scotus' Oxford
• God's Grandeur
• Harry Ploughman
• Henry Purcell
• Hurrahing in Harvest
• Inversnaid
• I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark
• The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
• The May Magnificat
• My Own Heart, Let Me Have More Pity On
• No Worst, There is None
• Patience, Hard Thing!
• Pied Beauty
• The Sea and the Skylark
• Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves
• Spring
• Spring and Fall
• St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
• The Starlight Night
• That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
• Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
• Tom's Garland
• To Seem the Stranger
• To What Serves Mortal Beauty
• The Windhover
• The Wreck of the Deutschland - Part the First
• The Wreck of the Deutschland - Part the Second

The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins » To What Serves Mortal Beauty

To what serves mortal beauty | dangerous; does set danc-
ing blood the O-seal-that-so | feature, flung prouder form
Than Purcell tune lets tread to? | See: it does this: keeps warm
Men's wits to the things that are; | what good means--where a glance
Master more may than gaze, | gaze out of countenance.
Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh | windfalls of war's storm,
How then should Gregory, a father, | have gleanèd else from swarm-
ed Rome? But God to a nation | dealt that day's dear chance.
To man, that needs would worship | block or barren stone,
Our law says: Love what are | love's worthiest, were all known;
World's loveliest--men's selves. Self | flashes off frame and face.
What do then? how meet beauty? | Merely meet it; own,
Home at heart, heaven's sweet gift; | then leave, let that alone.
Yea, wish that though, wish all, | God's better beauty, grace.