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he poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844–1889) loved naming the things of earth and sea and air, pinpointing,
likening them to other things, and playing with names:
shallowing shore, crispings, cross-harrowed, grotted, whorled, wimpling,
ricked and sharply inscaped, flaked or foiled like fungus, zigzag brooks rav-
elled out and shining, the huddling and gnarls of the water, the dance and
swagging of the light green tongues or ripples of waves, the backdraught
shrugging the stones together.All these are culled from his journals, where one day’s entry can hold as many
as fifteen such items, the honeycomb cells of his imagination.
“Pied Beauty” goes into the world wild and wide-eyed, naming motley jos-
tling life while packing all this earthliness within a pious frame.
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded 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;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;“freshness deep down things”
The World Charged by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Quoin, groin, veins, lobes, cusp, comb, cornice, sheath, spike,
spray, skeined, sleeve-pieces, shard-covered, shires of snow,
shoaling colors...T