Who else but Hopkins to wake us up, to dazzle our eyes and ears, and to fill us with expectation? A poem for you on this final Monday of Advent:
from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-natured name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins