DANIEL BROWNDown roughcast, down dazzling whitewash I wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long I lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous I ropes, wrestles, beats earth
bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rutpeel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed I dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks I treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fueled I nature's bonfire burns on. (GMH 1-9)The meteorological phenomena of wind, clouds, and evaporation illustrate
"nature's bonfire." A closed system of heat and water vapor comparable to
that of the steam engine, the physics of this "bonfire" is understood to be
that of thermodynamics. The diurnal and seasonal variations in the
exposure of atmospheric air to the sun's heat, along with such factors as the
amount of moisture in the air (which holds such heat better than dry air),
cause differences in pressure among bodies of air. In 1868 a series of maps
was published that chart the distribution of the air pressure in the earth's
atmosphere and the pattern of the prevailing winds for each month of the
year. From these charts came the understanding that wind occurs as the
flow of high-pressure air to areas of lower pressure. Clouds are formed as
the temperature of bodies of air drop, thus causing the condensation of
their moisture. Particular cloud formations and their alterations in shape
and position make visible the changing patterns of heat, moisture, and
pressure distribution in the earth's atmosphere. Put more radically, all such
phenomena have their source in complicated thermodynamic relations
between bodies of air and water: "All things," Heraclitus declares, "are an
equal exchange for fire and fire for all things." 30 The swiftly moving
glittering and protean clouds, like the efficacious evaporative effects of the
wind on the "ooze" that are also described by the poem, make "nature's
bonfire" visible and identify it with the entire atmosphere of the earth.
Indeed, we are made to replicate the changes in air pressure that determine
the phenomena of clouds described at the beginning of the poem when we
read these lines aloud. In doing so we have to deploy breath with sufficient
pressure to mark each of the discrete and deliberate staccato stresses and
long vowel sounds of the opening phrases - "Cloud-puffball, torn tufts,
tossed pillows I flaunt forth" - before the more rapid even exhalation
required for the pyrrhic sequence in the phrase "then chevy on an air- /
Built thoroughfare," which describes the quick light movement of the
clouds that is facilitated by an expanse of warm rising air. Through such
techniques, Hopkins makes us enact gestures that reciprocate God's graces,
giving the breath of life and other graces back to God, their source. "Resign
them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath," he
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