Aine Minogue

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

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 áll trádes, 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
Praise him

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change; Praise Him

~

Before The World Was Made
William Butler Yeats

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

~

Before the World Was Made
Van Morrison

If i paint the lashes dark
and the eyes more bright
and your lips more scarlet
ask if it'll all be right
and it's mirror after mirror
no vanities displayed
you're just looking for the face you had
before the world was made

before the world was made
before the world was made

And if i look upon you now
as though i have my view
with the earth beneath your feet
and heaven up above
would you think me cruel
after everything's been said
you're only looking for the face you had

before the world was made
before the world was made

And if i paint the lashes dark
and your eyes more bright
and your lips more scarlet
ask if it'll all be right
and it's mirror after mirror
no vanities displayed
i'm just looking for the face you had
before the world was made

before the world was made
before the world was made

before the world was made
Your original face
before time and space
your original face
before time and space
your original, original face
before the world was made

~
The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable...

... What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind...

...Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present...

... I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.