The first time I met The Twitcher in his multi-pocketed jacket, with his binoculars swinging from his neck, I asked him whom he'd seen on the wing. Woodpeckers, he told me, and some grey wagtails. The second time he told me he'd seen a kingfisher by the river. I was excited and told him about the poem copied below, with a brief analysis and reading to boot. The third time, he said he'd been looking out for me - what was the name of that poem? '"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame..." but you might like "The Windhover" even better,' I said, and proceeded to quote the opening lines, as best as I could remember them.
In return, he told me about his latest obsession - pond-dipping for rotifers, or wheel animacules. He told me how amazing they are to look at through a microscope and about the little wheel like things, made of cilia, that rotate on their heads, as it were. We both got excited by the etymology - the name meaning 'wheel bearer'. Then he said he's an entomologist, rather than a twitcher, and has a microscope at home. He takes his specimens from the pond in the nature reserve to his lab and examines them. A friend had put him in touch with the world expert on rotifers, who now called him every day with reading lists and to discuss the little animals. 'I'm getting a free education!' he enthused. He must be in his fifties, late fifties, this man, but learning remains a passion.
Further up the hill, a man in camouflage pants and binoculars held up to his face, was checking out the crest of the rise. 'Who're you looking at?' I asked. 'A pair of hares!' he told me. 'I've not seen them here for years. They'd left, but they're back. Look, up there.' I squinted. Nothing but grass, or wheat, or whatever it is. 'They hide in the furrows,' he said.
As I climbed further, a skylark hovered above me, calling out his warning, and, from the woods a chorus of birdsong opened like the fragrant May blossoms, showering petals of sound. The sky was forget-me-not-blue and a fresh breeze made the leaves jitter-bug in a rustle of whispering skirts.
This time. These opportunities. This freedom. The background is grief and fear; the foreground is a reprieve, with so many possible richnesses. Like the Manchester Collective's weekly Isolation Broadcast concerts. this week, the Goldberg Variations. Like psychiatrist and writer Dan Siegel's PEPP Talks, online meetings to consider building resilience. Like the National Theatre and the Hampstead Theatre streaming plays. Joe Wicks doing daily P.E. classes. Free yoga and meditation online. And a world of resources always on the Internet.
This gift of time. This gift to those of us well and safe and secure. Doubly blessed. Trebly blessed. For now. Appreciate this. Appreciate this with a heart full of love and gratitude and a heart full of compassion, too, for those sick, those working, those struggling. Accept the gifts of life with grace for it is finite and suffering is entailed in existence.
And in this finite time, be you, be true, be the best you can be.
Now the poem.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame...
Gerard Manley Hopkins
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; 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 Whát I do is me: for that I came. Í say móre: the just man justices; Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God’s eye he is— Chríst—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.
Here is a reading of the poem.
I love the opening line for the alliteration but also for the vibrancy of the image. 'Catch fire' is active and immediate - with a threefold meaning: catching fire as newspaper does when touched with a match, lighting up through the reflection of the sun's rays and catching the light as well as catching fish.
The next three lines are about sound, GMH transitioning us swiftly into another sense. The glory of the birds and the insects, their colour and brightness isn't his priority as such. Instead he is concerned with how their brilliance expresses their uniqueness. There's also a kind of synesthetic effect - as if the flashes of light have an aural quality to them; as if the ringing of the stones and the bells have a visual quality.
He imagines the sound of a stone thrown into a 'roundy' well - a lovely coined word - this is fitting as both kingfisher and dragonfly are water creatures, so GMH takes us to water - but to the darkness and depths of a well, with the sound echoing up, instead of light reflecting off the animals. 'Tumbled over rim' is a beautiful image - the fall made active and acrobatic. And that line has the tumbling rhythm of the stone falling and bouncing off the rocky sides of the well. In the same way 'tucked string tells' echoes the sound of the plucked string. 'Tells' has the sense of speaking out, an idea expanded later. Indeed, it's amplified with the concept of the bell's 'tongue'. 'Fling out broad' makes us hear the sound of the large, loud bell, a sound that covers distance. Again, it's an active word, 'flings', a word with life and vivacity. With gusto.
Now the line that starts to explain his thesis: 'Each mortal thing does one thing and the same'. So, he's saying that things with lives, mortal things, have the same unique quality as an individual bell. They have their own identity or signature, which is the inherent individuality of their very being. This is instress - see here for an explanation of the concept.
The following line is very compressed - what he is saying is that every being cannot help but push into the world the evidence of what it is inside, what its core self-ness is. 'Deals' makes this active: this pouring out of identity is something mortal beings do. It 'selves', creates itself, in its activity. 'Myself it speaks and spells' - our actions show who we are. 'Spells' carries the sense both of 'spelling something out' (making it clear) and of magic. This is an act of creation, moment by moment.
The final line of this opening section is, I think, very powerful. What we do is what we are has both a sense of both the inevitability of making plain our self through what we do in the world and also the responsibility we bear. We are all unique creatures and our uniqueness is part of the richness of creation.
Now to the concluding section of the sonnet. And note the 'sprung rhythm', creating both emphasis and energy. Again, go here for more on GMH's innovative use of rhythm.
The idea here is deep, somewhat convoluted. GMH says that a good person acts well, and by virtue of his good action, in accordance with his nature, he maintains his grace. This word obviously has religious content: by his good actions, in accordance with his God-given nature, he secures his salvation. By acting as God intended him to be, he lives up to his God, he conforms to the vision God has of him. And that vision? It is the vision of the Son of Man. Christ, the real and single glory, that encompasses all the diverse unique glories of each mortal thing. It's like all of creation is a facet of Christ, shining forth, in its own way, as aspect of the divine. We all have, at our heart, in what makes us ourselves, a grain of divinity. And when God sees us, he loves in us that part which shows him his Son.
This is again both descriptive and prescriptive: we all have this gift, and thus we all have the responsibility to be true to it, to let it catch fire, ring out and cry out 'this is why I am here!'
Although I don't share GMH's religion, I do share this belief, that we have this seed of selfhood inside us which it behooves us to express. There is an invocation to make the most of ourselves. In this mortal realm, be you, be true, be the best you can be.
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