hopkins

Jamie's post is bang on the money. I want to post Hopkins's 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', but it's way too long. I'll post a link to it, and just two stanzas. Five exiled Franciscan nuns die in the wreck of the ship Deutschland - and five is the number of vowels in the alphabet and wounds on Christ's body. So the catastrophe is the route by which godhead enters and ravishes us, shows us its divine sexy mangled body:


Loathed for a love men knew in them,
Banned by the land of their birth,
Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;
Surf, snow, river and earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; 165
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them.

22

Five! the finding and sake
And cipher of suffering Christ. 170
Mark, the mark is of man’s make
And the word of it Sacrificed.
But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken,
Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced—
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token 175
For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.


The whole poem can be seen online here:

http://www.bartleby.com/122/4.html