As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
When we look at a landscape, we probably aren’t thinking about it as a clamorous system of self-proclamations.
Gerard Manley Hopkins saw it that way. For Hopkins, each thing in creation is continually proclaiming itself just by being. In the unconscious flutter of wings is the dramatic force of a being dealing out its inmost self.
Hopkins understood that identity was not just what we see at the surface. Instead, identity permeates the entirety of a person or thing. He called the essence of a thing the inscape: the complex and unified system of characteristics that make a thing unique and distinguish it from others.
Hopkins’s sonnet “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” written in 1877, presents us with a view of the world colored by this understanding. In the poem, authentic identity takes the form of the joyful and continual proclamation of our own being. Before we can arrive at this fullness of life, however, Hopkins shows us what we must ground ourselves in, such that all of our being resounds with the source of life that gives us our identity.
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins points out that God is present in each person. (Public Domain)
The World Full of Life
Hopkins starts his poem with a vibrant sequence of sights and sounds:As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name.
The flash of the kingfisher’s plumage, the gleam of the dragonfly’s wing, the clatter of a falling stone in a well, the tolling of the bell—all of these things seem unconnected, but Hopkins wants us to realize their connection. The seemingly random selection of images is tied together in his point: “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same.”
All creatures have their place in the world. "Kingfisher," 1871, by John Ruskin. Watercolor, gouache, ink, pencil on paper. Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, England. (Public Domain)
What makes this poem all the more impressive is the musicality of the lines; Hopkins uses sound to unify this list. The use of assonance, consonance, and alliteration (repetition of vowels, consonants, and starting sounds) ties the images together both in concept and in sound. Rather than composing a brief list of wells and wings, Hopkins carefully crafts sounds to connect the seemingly unconnected and further illustrate his point: The things he names are distinct in what they are, but they are united in what they do.
Each thing “selves.” The kingfisher needs no grand actions to be spectacular. Its magnificence lies in that it is doing just what it was created to do, namely to be wholly and fiercely what God intended it to be. “Myself it speaks and spells,” writes Hopkins, but this is not an egocentric activity. It “deals out that being indoors each one dwells”; it pours out what it has been given and is somehow left all the more itself, undiminished.
The Source of Life
In the second stanza, Hopkins expands the picture to include the virtuous man who acts in line with God’s plan:I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— Christ
The virtuous man is characterized by integrity. His whole being is unified in his pursuit of virtue. He lives according to God’s will for humanity that will mean being to live a virtuous life that we might someday live with God in heaven.God does not face our same difficulty in seeing others correctly. Nothing obscures his sight, but the just man intentionally reflects God’s light so that everyone else may see him more clearly. As Hopkins points out, God is present in each person, but it is the just man who aligns his actions with those of his Creator so that God and man act as one.
Indeed, all the dynamic action of the poem, from the movement of the bird’s wing to the virtuous actions of the just man, is the action of the Son of God in each thing:
... For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
In these closing lines of the poem, Hopkins shows that God’s light emanates from the person, radiating from every feature. It’s one thing to believe that Christ is in each person, but to see that the Creator is there at play even within the tiniest of movements like the fluttering of wings or the subtle changes that overspread someone’s expression is to truly behold the essence of the person.
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnet "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" gives each being in creation its special place. Common kingfisher hovering. (Joefrei/CC BY-SA 3.0)
These last lines further reveal Hopkins’s understanding of who the Son of God is. He is at play in all of creation, and there is no verb that could so perfectly reveal a gentle love of a thing for its own sake as “play.”
It suggests that he is both at work and engaged in the innocent, childlike enjoyment of each thing, and this in turn gives joy to his father. In each thing, he is so wholly present that it is as though his attention were on that thing alone. His actions within that thing or person are both a sign of love for it and a call for others to love it as well.
How to Live
We are afraid to lose ourselves. In conforming our will to another’s, we sense that we give something up and we fear that we become less ourselves. In Hopkins’s view, the opposite is true: Though the path to virtue is difficult and naturally involves giving up some things we want out of love for God, the result is that we become more fully ourselves.
The sound of a dragonfly's wings carries a message in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." Yellow-winged darter dragonfly. (Aka/CC BY-SA 2.5)
We have only the options of being fully ourselves, cooperating with grace and God’s design for us, or becoming less of ourselves through vice and vain pursuits; no other identity is possible. When we choose the former, our gaze is transformed. Everything assumes a new dignity as a living vessel of divine life, and we ourselves catch fire with the insatiable love of being.
As Dr. Holly Ordway, author and visiting professor at Houston Christian University, writes: “We feel the joy of the kingfisher, dragonfly, stone, bell, and man each being exactly what they are meant to be: rooted, grounded, graced in Christ.”
We become most fully ourselves and most fully united to the source of all life: he who set everything in motion and continues to move in all things.
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