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Home  »  56. (Ash-boughs)

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

56. (Ash-boughs)

a.

NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,

Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep

Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.

Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled

Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creep

Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.

They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep

The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May

Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray

Of greenery: it is old earth’s groping towards the steep

Heaven whom she childs us by.

(Variant from line 7.) b.

They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there hurled],

With talons sweep

The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,

But more cheer is when] May

Mells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray

Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steep

Heaven with it whom she childs things by.