A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.

Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being.

I am soft sift 25 In an hourglass — at the wall Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift, And it crowds and it combs to the fall; I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane, But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall 30 Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.