Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
23. The Bugler’s First Communion
A
There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day to it—to a First Communion.
Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet
To his youngster take his treat!
Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.
By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ’s darling, dauntless;
Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless;
Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.
When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach
Yields tender as a pushed peach,
Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!
Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to
And do serve God to serve to
Just such slips of soldiery Christ’s royal ration.
Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending
That sweet’s sweeter ending;
Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns.
O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad
And locks love ever in a lad!
Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment
In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing
That brow and bead of being,
An our day’s God’s own Galahad. Though this child’s drift
Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam
In backwheels though bound home?—
That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by;
Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did
Prayer go disregarded:
Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven heard these.