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Poem: “The Starlight Night”

by on Sep 12, 2016 in Poetry
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The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
   Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
   Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
   Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
   Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, England in 1844. He was a Jesuit priest and a poet. During his lifetime, most of his poems were rejected for publication. After a difficult life filled with depression and what he considered personal failures, Hopkins died of Typhoid fever in 1889. He was 44 years old. However, on his deathbed his depression seemed to have left him, his last words being, “"I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life." He is thought of as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. He is famous for his use of sprung rhythm, at a time when metered rhythm was the norm.


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