The Starlight Night

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

* * *

This is the ideal poem to recite while walking back from the chapel beneath the stars, prayerbook in hand and dewy grass on bare feet . . . one of my favourite things to do.

The images here are so bright, so brilliant: fire-folk, elves' eyes, diamond mines, white flowers in springtime--images piled up one after the other so fast you can barely breathe between them.

The sestet is more confusing, and I'm not quite sure I understand it. But I think that the stars are compared to a great treasure, bought with prayer, stored up like shocked wheat in a barn. Then it seems the stars are the barn, the fence (paling) that holds heaven behind it. Think of the stars as a lattice, barely obscuring the glories of heaven.

Go out! Look at the stars! Isn't it true?