Text 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 Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
     Keeps 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.

Footnotes

  1. This insinuates that Christ is in everything.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor

  2. According to, “The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins: an essay in semiotic phenomenology,” by Dennis Sobolev, is a term Hopkins used to describe a variety of phenomena, but the individual or the inner workings of the self is what inscape means in the context of this poem. Inscape is that which comprises the individual.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor

  3. The first two lines are visual descriptions and these two are aural descriptions. This sets up readers to focus on the inscape nature of the poem.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor

  4. This is an Italian sonnet. The first stanza is an octave at 8 lines and the second stanza is a sestet at 6 lines.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor

  5. A kingfisher is a small colorful bird. Birds make several appearances in Hopkins’s poetry often in conjunction with religious themes.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor