The wreck of the flocks
Grows brightly on hills,
While wind plays its wandering
Wisdom
Within softest springs;
Time shifts a tale
And like bubbling lives all bend like wisps—
It is the eye of light!

To see, where wonders run
To blessed renewal to a pulse green,
What day can bloom?
While friendship stirs about!
Then to learn that heaven keeps
The world to soft array;

To each given hour
With minute arms,
And passing’s shafts that greet,
where man builds homes—a wonder, a turn—in between.

Oh, ceasing and shifting comes with such,
For beauty thins through itself
Like earth’s delight,
And souls!
To tender hymns, no sour time!

In season
Is every leaf bending!/
And ever still the law of wind!
Again I love life!
I!/
Dare pregnant the soul seeks tenderness—
Changing through space!

• Gerard Manley Hopkins