Writing this series of columns about beauty has led me to think about the marvelous way that great poetry captures and expresses beauty. I confess that I do not read a great deal of poetry. I am not proud of that. I am making a confession.
Perhaps it is time for me to make some kind of commitment to reading more poetry. I suspect that if I do, my life might be enriched in a special way. Great poets see deeply into reality and have the talent, really the gift, to express what they see in beautiful language. We need to experience as much beauty in our lives as possible. Without beauty, our lives would be barren and boring. Because of God’s creative act, reality is beautiful.
The great poet’s insights into beauty can enrich our lives in wondrous ways. Not only do great poets see deeply into reality, but they share that vision with us through their beautiful creations. I know that I am going to try to read more poetry. I want to be more receptive to the beauty expressed in poems. I will be doing myself a favor.
These are two of my favorite poems. I first read them when I was a student in college. That was a few years ago. I am not certain about whether I first read both of them around the same time. Both poems deal with the gift of faith but from two different perspectives. One poem is Peter Viereck’s “Game Called On Account of Darkness.” The other is called number 34 or “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” which is the first line of the poem whose author is Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., my favorite poet.
In Viereck’s poem, the author mentions that when he was a child and attended Sunday school, he believed in God. He describes believing in God as a mixed bag. The first two stanzas of the poem are the following:
“Once, I had a friend.
He watched me from the sky.
Maybe he never lived at all.
Maybe too much friendship made him
die.”
“When the gang played cops-robbers
in the alley.
It was my friend who told me which
were which.
Now he doesn’t tell me anymore.
(Which team am I playing for?)”
The poem continues, mentioning that the author looked for answers from science, but it was no help. The last two stanzas of the poem are the following:
“He was like a kind of central- heating
In the big cold house, and that was
good.
One by one, I have to chop my toys
now
As firewood.
Every time I stood upon a crossroads,
It made me mad to feel him watch me
choose.
I’m glad there’s no more spying while
I play.
Still, I’m sad he went away.”
While Viereck’s poem expresses a kind of nostalgia for a faith that is now absent, Hopkins’ poem brilliantly sings the praises of a faith that sees deeply into the meaning of reality and especially the meaning and mystery of the human person.
In the first stanza, Hopkins claims that each being has a special meaning, and the very nature of that being speaks its meaning. It is as though each being is a message to us, a special “word” to us. The following is the first stanza of the poem:
“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 out
broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and
the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one
dwells;
Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and
spells,
Crying ‘What I do is me for that I
came.’ ”
The second stanza speaks of the person, “the just man,” sharing God’s life through grace. The following is the second stanza:
“I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings
graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye
he is-Christ- for Christ plays in
ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not
his
To the Father through the features of
men’s faces.”
Hopkins’ poem is probably my favorite poem. It expresses what I believe about reality and what I believe about the person in the state of grace. What Hopkins has said through his beautiful poem I try to say every Sunday in a homily.
He had the insight and the talent to express what we believe as Christians, namely that through grace, we share the life of the Risen Christ and that sharing changes the meaning of everything we do.
We are among those “ten thousand places” in which Christ plays.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.
