THE BEAUTY OF BLUEBELLS AND 'INSCAPE'

Posted: 01.05.20 in Articles category

"I do not think that I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of the Lord by it. Its inscape is mixed of strength and grace, like an ash tree."

In May 1870 Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote those words about the bluebell in his journal. That word 'inscape' was a concept Hopkins would develop in his writing - the essence of a thing revealing the divine presence. Hopkins would write often about seeing God's handiwork in nature and how the physical world "is charged with the grandeur of God". Visit a bluebell wood this month and see that beauty for yourself.

Gerald Manley Hopkins became one of the finest nature poets in the English language. Some of his poetry is sublime. Take for example the opening lines from his poem about a Kestrel, 'The Windhover': "I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon...." I read the opening words from his poem, 'As Kingfishers catch fire...' and in my mind's eye I can vividly picture the bird in sunlight.

Sometimes in our worship on Even Sparrows retreats we use the words of a Hopkins poem, 'Pied Beauty', as a prayer. Again the poet considers how aspects of the natural world like the colours of the sky, the skin of a fish and the flash of bird plumage show God's beauty shining through creation. What lovely language for a prayer of praise.

 

"Glory be to God for dappled things -

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him."