Of a Death in Winter

I

.   .   .   .   .   .   .

                                             Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, / death blots black out;

nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time / beats level. Enough!

The Resurrection.

A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days,

dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. / Flesh fade, and mortal

trash

Fall to the residuary worm; / world’s wildfare, leave

but ash:

   In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, / since he was what

I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, / patch, matchwood,

immortal diamond,

   Is immortal diamond.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS. From That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection.

II

.   .   .   .   .   .   .

The ravenous earth that now wooes her to be

Earth too, will be a Lemnia; and the tree

That wraps that christall in a wooden Tombe

Shall be tooke up spruce, fill’d with diamond.

JOHN DONNE. From Elegie: Death.