I was introduced to lots of poetry when I was young, and I memorized a good bit of it too, both by choice and due to curricular requirements. However, it's only been in the last few years that I have begun to appreciate more complex verse. Bits of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets wooed me (Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt... OR The wounded surgeon plies the steel...) and drew me into that set of poems. Now a book of Gerard Manley Hopkins' work has been [kindly] thrust upon me. It's often complex to the point of feeling incomprehensible at first, and yet... there's something there. This one, 'Peace' felt meaningful today, both personally and globally.
Peace
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
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