Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Correspondence #6

Thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread
Dovelike sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant.

John Milton
Paradise Lost


Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods, with warm breast, and with Ah! bright Wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
God's Grandeur

1 comment:

keylawk said...

This is another one of your interconnections -- "wings".

I always gently turn the compost -- it is rotting garbage -- to glimpse the moist rubies, the red worms in their glory, and think, why is it we think Hope is the thing with feathers? Why not the thing with an omnivorous alimentary canal? Or that winged thing, is it really Victory with no head? These worms are surely the winners of all disputed barricades. Victory does not have its wings for long. To the worm go the spoils and the spoilage. Surely Milton reaches when he imagines Dove wings, although certainly wright about the brooding. Yes, and Hopkins et too brooding, but it was a worm-holy spirit. Surely. Bright foreskin crawling red worms!