The Starlight Night: a poem

Every now and then, I like doing a project alongside my students. In AP Literature, I decided to join them for a paired poem project. Each of us chose an author with a pair of thematically related poems. We had to recite one poem from memory, creatively portray the other poem, and write an essay interpreting and evaluating them both. The essay outline is due next week so I haven't started that part yet, but I've really had fun with the first two steps.

I chose Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work I first discovered while teaching British Literature. He's a 19th-century Victorian poet known for his creative and even obscure language, vivid descriptions of nature, unusual rhythms, and passion for his Catholic faith. I love his exuberance - I feel like he grabs my hand, dashing along with me to show me something that he finds marvelous.

The poem I recited is called "Hurrahing in Harvest," which I liked enough to post on my blog back in 2010, but never fully understood. Memorizing it really helped! One of my students told me, "My poem didn't make sense the first five times I read it." I agree. I think good poetry is like that - it demands multiple sittings (and possibly a good dictionary), engaging our emotions and intellects before it spills its secrets. 

When I went back and read more of his poems for this project, I was also drawn to a new one:

"The Starlight Night"

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
    O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
    The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in deep woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
    Wind-beat *whitebeam! airy *abeles set on a flare!
    Flake-doves sent floating forth at a barnyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! - What? - Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
    Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow *sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The *shocks. This piece-bright *paling shuts the spouse
    Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

*whitebeam, abele, and sallow = types of trees; shocks = sheaves of grain; paling = fence

We had other creative options that I would usually find more comfortable, like performing the poem as a song or writing a short story based on the poem. But the visual imagery in "Starlight Night" seemed to dare me to draw it, even though some lines baffled me. Now I'm glad I took on the challenge. Here's how I ended up portraying it: