Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is

Friday, July 26, 2004. Today's poem is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and it's called Morning, Midday,

and Evening Sacrifice. I'll read it once, say a few words, and then read it again.

The dappled dieaway cheek and the wimpled lip, the gold wisp, the airy gray eye, all in

fellowship. This, all this beauty blooming, this, all this freshness fuming, give God

while worth consuming. Both thought and

Thou now bolder and told by nature, tower, head, heart, hand, heel and shoulder that beat

and breathe in power. This pride of crimes enjoyment take as for tool, not toyment, and hold at Christ's employment.

The vault and scope and schooling and mastery in the mind in silk ash kept from cooling and ripest underrined.

What life hath lifts the latch of, what hell stalks towards the catch of your offering with dispatch of.

This poem seems to fall squarely within the Carpe diem category, that subgenre of poetry, arguing that the hearer sees the day.

Although this is a pious inversion on that theme, frequently Carpe diem poems are exhorting

the young to go out and feel the youthful vigor of their age, to sow their wild oats, to

love while love is getting, that sort of thing. But here, Hopkins or the speaker in his poem

is urging the youthful and beautiful to offer to God the gifts of youth and beauty while they last.

Don't hoard them for yourself until they have spoiled.

And then when they are no use, or rather God can make use of anything,

but when they are of no value to you, then you render them up.

This, all this beauty blooming, all this freshness, fuming, give God while worth consuming.

And then he offers a warning in the second stanza, all of this, the breath and power, the bold thought and thoo,

the archaic word for might or power, all of this tower.

The tower of all of your faculties and limbs and the sum of all the gifts you have been given, don't take them as toys,

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