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Hopkins: “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe” Part II By Matthew Fox 4/01/2026 |
Yesterday we shared the first part of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem comparing Mary to the air we breathe. Here we share the second part with a brief commentary on the poem. Hopkins, a 19th century Jesuit poet and mystic, is thoroughly creation-centered as is evident in this
poem. |
Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire—shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain
light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass—blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow
shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz—fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault. |
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| So God was god of
old: A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to
mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man’s mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my
atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
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Fronting my forward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of
patience, penance, prayer:
World—mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee is led,
Fold home, fast fold thy child. Commentary: I am struck by the important role that “mothering” plays in this poem, much as it does in the teachings of Julian of Norwich who celebrates more than any other Western theologian up to the late 20th century the divine feminine, connecting it to compassion. Hopkins ends his poem with
“World—mothering air, air wild/wound with thee, in thee is led, Fold home, fast fold thy child.” Mary’s child is both Jesus and the rest of us, other Christs clearly. |
Mary is both mother and “my atmosphere,” we breathe her in and out daily, a “happier world.” It is through her that we see Christ and his light better and clearer and less dim. Hopkins bathes the poem in a cosmic sense—his is a “Cosmic Mary” who is part of the atmosphere and a “bath of blue and
slake” and “blackness bound,” and “all the thick stars round him roll/Flashing like flecks of coal.” Furthermore, “this blue heaven” |
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perfects light and the “hued sunbeam” and “every color glows.” The air is “Wild air, world—mothering air, nestling me everywhere” carrying with it the mothering qualities of nearness and hominess and nestling. There is a “new Nazareth” and a “new Bethlehem” born in us as we too, as Meister Eckhart teaches, birth the Christ like Mary did. There is a roundness to our existence, as Hildegard also teaches when she says we are “embraced by the arms of God.” Compassion, as Julian and Eckhart insist, is central to this holding. “I say that we are wound/With mercy round and round/As if with air: the same/Is Mary, more by name.” And like Mary, we birth “glory” or doxa, carrying on the divine activity. |
Banner Image: Mary with Jesus (1913). This lovely painting by an unknown artist was, surprisingly, given to Adolf Hitler on his 50th birthday. His mother was a practicing Catholic. Hitler gave this or a similar picture for the care of his parents’ grave in Leonding, Austria. Wikimedia
Commons. Public domain. |
Queries for Contemplation Do you recognize a “blinding glory” in yourself and others and the
more-than-human at times? A doxa that is godlike and radiates the light of both the Cosmic Christ and the Cosmic Mary? |
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