One of my favourite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins is The Habit of Perfection. It is, in many ways, a double entendre. On the one hand it refers to the common understanding of habit as repeated act until one arrives at perfection and on the other refers to the habit worn by religious. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest. The poem speaks of the spiritual qualities leading ultimately to moral perfection and implicitly features the concept of inscape that Hopkins is famous for. Inscape is associated with the Romantics but for Hopkins takes on a spiritual connotation. For Hopkins inscape is the individuated nature of a thing that reveals its true nature as it was called into being by God. Inscape is the opposite of the universalizing tendencies of Greek categories that saw the individual as a species of a more general category (e.g. a dog belongs to the genus of canine which, in turn, belongs to the genus of animal, etc.). With the concept of inscape, inscribed within the individual, is the general category. Therefore, by looking closely at the individual thing, the observer could see grasp the whole without ever having to abstract from the individual.
The Habit of Perfection is a good poem on positive asceticism and has an almost Buddhist and eastern feel.
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
The Habit of Perfection is a good poem on positive asceticism and has an almost Buddhist and eastern feel.
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
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