Drinking With God

The Windhover

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-   
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding   
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding   
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing   
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,            5
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding   
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding   
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!   

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here   
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion            10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!   

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion   
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,   
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.   

--   Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

what if a much of a which of a wind

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of things
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death towas)
-all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live.

-- e.e. cummings