Musings

The Windhover

A few hours ago on our morning walk with Uschi (our six-year-old eighty-eight pound German Shepherd), sun shone gold, ocean dazzled dark blue.

Bill and I chatted…sparingly. Our hearts are heavy. A cherished friend is at the last stage of a painful mortal illness and soon will leave us.

As we walk, normally we plan the day before us. Bill holds Uschi’s leash…I no longer need the support of a stick. Often I drift and dream.

This morning I kept hearing the lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet inspired by a kestrel:

“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon…”

How glorious…one hundred forty-seven years ago in London, a thirty-three-year-old Jesuit knew my feeling this sad but beautiful Santa Cruz morning.

If you aren’t familiar with Hopkins’ poetry, I am thrilled to introduce you to a heartbreakingly original and soaringly spiritual genius.

The Windhover
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 – 1889

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

This poem is in the public domain.

Note Please – WordPress won’t allow me to insert the indents specific to this poem, but if you want to read it with the proper indents, click the link I included in the poem title.

4 Comments. Leave new

  • Sylvia, you remembered such a deep poem. I view a falcon soaring in the wind… using the measured wisps and gusts as it spots its prey. I never thought that “skaters” would be literal. Now I see one gliding their way in a figure 8. Thanks for the thought-provoking message. We CAN power our own life. Spectacular.

    Reply
  • Rabbi Malka Drucker
    September 29, 2024 11:31 am

    Thank you, dear Sylvia, for returning this poem to me after 60 years as an undergraduate at UCLA. I read it this morning and soared with mad Hopkins.

    Reply

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