On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People
A Brother and Sister
O I admire and sorrow! The hearts eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beautys dearest veriest vein is tears.
Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for times aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.
And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolv?d dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.
She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the souls own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.
But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are
Of favoured make and mind and health and youth,
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or souls star?
Theres none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.
There s none but good can b? good, both for you
And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;
None good but Goda warning wav?d to
One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.
Man lives that list, that leaning in the will
No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,
The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,
Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.
Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye
May but call on your banes to more carouse.
Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,
To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward boughs?
Enough: corruption was the worlds first woe.
What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?
O but I bear my burning witness though
Against the wild and wanton work of men.
Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
