Nearest the secret of God's power) And plucked my fruit to make them wine, And sucked the soul of that child of mine
As the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.
XXIV. Ha, ha, the trick of the angels white! They freed the white child's spirit so. I said not a word, but day and night
I carried the body to and fro, An d it lay on my heart like a stone, as chill. ?The sun may shine out as much as he will:
1 am cold, though it happened a month ago.
xxv. From the white man's house, and the black man's hut, I carried the little body on; Th e forest's arms did round us shut,
An d silence through the trees did run: They asked no question as I went, They stood too high for astonishment,
They could see God sit on His throne.
XXVI. My little body, kerchiefed fast, I bore it on through the forest, on; And when I felt it was tired at last,
I scooped a hole beneath the moon: Through the forest-tops the angels far, With a white sharp finger from every star,
Did point and mock at what was done.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Thou art indeed just, Lord1
Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen
justa loquar ad te: quare via impiorutn prosperatur? etc. ?Jer. xii 1.
1. From a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, nificance in the 'Author's Preface,' included in Oxford University; it is a clean copy, made after Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1970), ed. W . earlier drafts, which Hopkins goes on to revise fur-H. Gardner and N. H. Mackenzie. ther. Differences in the ink show that the emen-The epigraph is from the Vulgate translation of dation 'laced they are' (line 10) was made during Jeremiah 12.1; a literal translation of the Latin is the first writing, but that the other verbal changes 'Thou art indeed just, Lord, [even] if 1 plead with were made later. The interlinear markings are Thee; nevertheless I will speak what is just to Thee: Hopkins's metrical indicators; he explains their sig-Wh y does the way of the wicked prosper? etc.'
.
POEMS IN PROCESS / A1 9
March 17 1889
Lord, if i
ho u art indeed just, *vci'n I to contend
sir, plead
Wit h thee; but, .Lord, so what I j>pcalr is just.
Wh y do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end? j Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, / Ho w wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
/ ^^^ ^ O the sots and of
[ Defeat, thwart me ? ?ALL! MJTV U ILIILM, thrallsNK^lust
V Do in that
spare hours ikfmor e thrive than I J*4*erspend,
great See,
Sir,-nr^life on thv.cause. Luuk, banks and brakes
Now, leaved laced they are
?Lowed how thick! bi'oidorcd oil again look
?With fretty chervil, and fresh wind / shakes I ^Them ; birds build?but not I build; no, hut strain, | Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O send my
' TIILII kiilid, thou lord of life, thong rootsj^oir rain.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Yeats usually composed very slowly and with painful effort. He tells us in his autobiography that 'five or six lines in two or three laborious hours were a day's work, and I longed for somebody to interrupt me.' His manuscripts show the slow evolution of his best poems, which sometimes began with a prose sketch, were then versified, and underwent numerous revisions. In many instances, even after the poems had been published, Yeats continued to revise them, sometimes drastically, in later printings.
The Sorrow of Love1
[Manuscript, 1891]2
Th e quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
