Gold-Vermilion

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Narration: Michael McGowan, Violin: Kristin McGowan

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There are moments when something in the natural world stops us in our tracks. A bird suspended against the wind, sunlight breaking through the clouds, or the sudden brilliance of a fire. We may not know quite why, but something within us responds. For a moment, our attention is drawn away from ourselves, and we find ourselves looking towards something greater.

Few poets understood this experience as deeply as Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Born in England in 1844, Hopkins became a Catholic and later a Jesuit priest. He spent the final five years of his life in Ireland, teaching at University College Dublin, and died in the city in 1889. Though his time here was not always a happy one, Ireland became an important chapter in his life and literary legacy. He was a remarkable observer of the natural world, finding in its smallest details an extraordinary expression of God's presence.

Among his finest works is The Windhover, written in 1877 and dedicated simply, but profoundly, "To Christ our Lord." Hopkins himself considered it his greatest achievement, describing it in a letter to his friend Robert Bridges as "the best thing I ever wrote."

The poem begins with Hopkins watching a kestrel, known as a windhover, riding the morning air. His description is almost overwhelming in its energy. The bird seems to command the wind, balancing effortlessly above the earth, its wings catching and resisting the currents beneath it. Hopkins sees royalty, courage, beauty and mastery in this extraordinary creature.

Yet something more is happening than the admiration of a beautiful bird.

My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

The sight awakens something within him. His heart, previously hidden, is stirred by the beauty before him. And this is perhaps where the poem begins to speak to us spiritually. We can become so occupied with ourselves, our ambitions, our concerns and our own sense of importance that we lose sight of the world beyond us. But beauty has a way of interrupting that inward preoccupation. It draws us out of ourselves.

For Hopkins, the bird becomes a revelation of something greater. Its strength and magnificence point beyond themselves towards Christ.

In the next stanza, he writes:

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

The word "buckle" is particularly striking. It suggests both a coming together and a bending or yielding, as though all the bird's physical beauty, strength and mastery must ultimately give way to a greater glory. Hopkins turns towards Christ, his chevalier, his knight, whose beauty and power surpass anything found in creation.

There is a profound Christian thought here. We are not diminished by turning towards God. Rather, we discover what we are truly made for. The movement away from the self and towards God is not a loss of life, but the beginning of a fuller one. Like the falcon riding the wind, we discover that freedom is not simply a matter of mastering everything around us. It is found in surrendering ourselves to something greater.

But it is in the final three lines that Hopkins offers perhaps his most beautiful image:

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.

He turns from the falcon to two humble images. The plough cuts through the earth, turning over the soil and exposing its shining surface. Then there are the embers of a fire. As they fall and break apart, their dark, blue-bleak exterior gives way to flashes of brilliant gold and vermilion.

Something beautiful is revealed through the breaking.

It is difficult not to see the Christian significance. Christ's glory is revealed through his Passion. His self-giving love, expressed most completely in the Cross, is not defeated by suffering but revealed through it. The fire that breaks from the embers becomes an image of a glory that was present all along, but hidden from view.

And perhaps there is a lesson here for each of us.

We spend so much of our lives protecting the self: our pride, our ambitions, our expectations and our need to be in control. Yet the Christian invitation is to turn away from this inward focus and towards God. To surrender, not because we have nothing left to give, but because we have discovered someone infinitely greater to whom we can give ourselves.

Perhaps surrender is not the extinguishing of the self, but its opening. Like the embers, we need not fear that everything we hold together is what makes us who we are. There may be a deeper light waiting to be revealed.

It is particularly lovely to encounter this poem through a contemporary Irish voice. Grian Chatten, lead singer of Fontaines D.C., recently recited The Windhover and reflected on Hopkins in an episode of Interesting People Reading Poetry. It is a reminder that these words, written almost 150 years ago, still have the power to move and challenge us today.

Listen to Grian Chatten read Gerard Manley Hopkins on Spotify.

Perhaps that is the gift of Hopkins's poem. He begins by looking at a bird, but ends by looking towards Christ. He begins with wonder at the beauty of creation, but discovers something greater in the Creator.

And in those final words, gold-vermillion, we are left with an image of the hidden glory that can emerge when something is opened, broken and transformed.

Sometimes, the way towards God begins simply by looking beyond ourselves. And sometimes, it is only when we surrender what we have been holding onto that we begin to see the light.