what I do is me: for that I came

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
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 do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: 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.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "As kingfishers catch fire," undated.

Will I ever get tired of posting Hopkins poems and then waving my hands around in awe and bafflement? Signs point to no. Sometimes I think about his utterly bizarre, completely idiosyncratic, glorious revolution of the sonnet, and then I get happy and sad at the same time. He's not like anybody else before or since, and I can never decide whether or not I think that's a good thing.