Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is the 1st of April 2004.

Today's poem is by one of our favorites here at the Daily Poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and because it is the Monday following Easter, today's poem is that nature is a Heraclitian fire

and of the comfort of the resurrection. I plan to read the poem just once, so I'll say a few

things about it first. Namely, I love this poem. It's a great poem. One of my favorite

things about it is what's

happening on a structural level. This is really two poems stacked on top of each other. And if you can

get a look at the poem itself, even the shape of the two halves, so show you the thematic

turning point.

I'll say more about that in a moment after I explain the title.

Heraclitus was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher.

One of the things that he's best remembered for is his theory of flux. That is that the primary reality, or the primary force that we

experience in the material world is that of change, that the world is always in flux, that

the primary element at work in all of the material world

is fire, constantly consuming and reshaping the world that we live in and know empirically.

Heraclytus was the one who famously said, you never step into the

same river twice because it's always flowing past you as soon as you dip your foot into the water. The water that first wetted your toe is now feet away and then yards away and then miles away and you'll never see it again.

When people point out that our bodies are constantly shedding skin and replacing it with new skin cells and that the you that you were

six years ago isn't the you that you are now. These people are channeling Heraclitian philosophy.

The problem of the ship of Theseus is fundamentally a Heraclitian philosophical conundrum or problem.

And in the poem, Hopkins gives us a world through this Heraclitian lens.

But there's also something of a medieval cosmology at work as well.

So he starts high with the clouds, and then he slowly descends and zooms in to the very earthy.

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