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Photo of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets.. English poet Roman Catholic convert and Jesuit priest

Email Poem - My prayers must meet a brazen heavenEmail Poem

My prayers must meet a brazen heaven

 My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above; 
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love, 
But feel the long success of sin.

My heaven is brass and iron my earth: 
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay, 
So harden'd is it in this dearth
Which praying fails to do away.
Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouth
Could mould, if any tears there were.
A warfare of my lips in truth, 
Battling with God, is now my prayer.



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