Poem: Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Bugler’s First Communion” [Vol. 1, #45]

 

The Bugler’s First Communion

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hill

There)--boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish

          Mother to an English sire (he

Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on

My late being there begged of me, overflowing

          Boon in my bestowing,

Came, I say, this day to it--to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then in regimental red.

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.

There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine,

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.

Frowning and forefending angel-warder

Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;

          March, kind comrade, abreast him;

Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.

How it does my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,

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!

Then though I should tread tufts of consolation

Days after, so I in a sort deserve to

          And do serve God to serve to

Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration.

Nothing else is like it, no, not all so strains

Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending

          That sweet's sweeter ending;

Realm both Christ is heir to and there reigns.

O now well work that sealing sacred ointment!

O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad

          And locks love ever in a lad!

Let me though see no more of him, and not disappointment

Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift.

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

Seems by a divine doom channelled, nor do I cry

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;

Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas

Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did

          Prayer go disregarded:

Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven

   heard these.