Easter

Third stanza, by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Beauty now for ashes wear,

Perfumes for the garb of woe,

Chaplets for disheveled hair,

Dances for sad footsteps slow;

Open wide your hearts that they

Let in joy this Easter Day.

Christmas Prayer

by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Moonless darkness stands between.

Past, the Past, no more be seen!

But the Bethlehem star may lead me

To the sight of Him who freed me

From the self that I have been.

Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;

Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;

Now beginning, and always,

Now begin, on Christmas day.

God's Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.