As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells,
Each hung bell’s bow swung finds tongue to fling,

What is past change;
I say more: The just man justices;
Kept equable, the devil’s fury unchecked,
Lends every man a face;

When the happy hour comes, to griefs that fall,
In times of mystery, I fall in as well,
The divine bring, to a verge, where sorrow said,
‘There is the land and the fresh yield!

Alive may be-well out there-
All is grace and in return, as with song-bough crossed,
Faith finds sweet closure;

Only in this land is furnished a greener love;
No better being cannot permitting it to fly.

What is past change—and the past we haunt
Unlike the reed, in its grain, most ever free:
That leans to wrong and knows not good,

But I am borne again and I begin again:
Ablaze, not long
Lest the dark sweep of elements outrange me,
With friends, that rising truth quenches all despair.

A kingfisher, a maiden;
And like hermit reeds, flying stilled
Across we list naked arms.

• Gerard Manley Hopkins