Double Sonnet

Julia Manning

from Double Sonnet

10.

Tread softly! all the earth is holy ground.
It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,
This spot we stand on is a Paradise
Where dead have come to life and lost been found,
Where Faith has triumphed, Martyrdom been crowned,
Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise;
From this same spot the dust of saints may rise,
And the King’s prisoners come to light unbound.
O earth, earth, earth, hear thou thy Maker’s Word:
“Thy dead thou shalt give up, nor hide thy slain”—
Some who went weeping forth shall come again
Rejoicing from the east or from the west,
As doves fly to their windows, love’s own bird
Contented and desirous to the nest.

Christina Rossetti


This is sonnet #10 of 28 from "Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets". This one seems particularly suited to Easter. The idea of the entire earth as a resurrection scene intrigues me. "Where dead have come to life and lost been found." How true, how strange and true. I mean, for one thing, it's Spring, and the dead, brown soil is coming to life again, the bare tree branches are bursting into leaf. And yes, this is the place where generations of wild creatures have been born, where we ourselves grew, and those after us - we are witness to these cycles. I love that "O earth, earth, earth, hear thou thy Maker's Word." it's almost a direct quote from Jeremiah 22:29, a most beautiful call of hope, a reassurance of future resurrection. The Creator's Son has died and risen so that all creation will rise, new, rejoicing. The earth, a Paradise once more. This is the promise of Christianity, and whether one believes it or not, it is compelling. 

 

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire

Terry Watkinson, 'The Headland'

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire

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 ín 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 Resurrection,

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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin 

It was a good day for cloud-watching. Drama in skyland. It made me think of this poem. The clouds “they throng, they glitter in marches”  - that’s exactly it, and they most definitely “flaunt forth”. The poet seems here to have ripped into his storehouse of words for sounds and colours and movement and thrown everything at us. "Nature's bonfire", oh yes, he gives us a conflagration of words to embody his theme. It's a strain to read slowly when the movement is so driving. Nature truly is changing all the time, flaring up, flickering, dying out. The clouds demonstrate this daily. And we too, “how fast our firedint”, how quickly we burn and fade. Hopkins seems almost overcome by the thought until he forces himself to remember that this is not the end. Death will not extinguish him, will not” beat him level” while he holds to the hope of the resurrection, the hope that because Christ became mortal and died in his place, he has in turn taken on the immortality of Christ and will live forever. "Away grief's-grasping, joyless days, dejection"... Matchwood becomes diamond.