Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only
not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous
the tainting of the earth's air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I cán tell such a key, I dó know such a place,
Where whatever's prizèd and passes of us, everything that's fresh
and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away
with,
done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously
sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets móre, fastened with the tenderest truth
To it's own best being and loveliness of youth: it is an
ever-lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,
loose locks, long locks, lovelocks,
gaygear, going gallant,
girlgrace -
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them
with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them;
beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to
God,
beauty's self and beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had
lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what
while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a
heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so
haggard
at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed,
so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. - Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where. -
Yonder. - What high as that! We follow, now we follow. - Yonder, yes
yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
-
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)