Gerard Manley Hopkins — Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published Chap.48

48 That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then     chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng;     they glitter in marches. Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm    arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats    earth bare Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches,    starches Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark           Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resur-     rection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.           Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:           In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal     diamond,           Is immortal diamond.