BEAUTY BRIGHT

“Men go by me whom either beauty bright     

In mould or mind or what not else makes rare.”

   -- from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Lantern Out of Doors”

 

"Three Walkers", oil, by George Coll

     Gerard Manley Hopkins came to see that rareness was everywhere, and so, slowly but steadily, am I. To me, in my seventy-first year, all things, more and more, seem superior and second-to-none. Every little leaf these early April days seems somehow outstanding, and all the passing breezes bring a bit of brand-newness with them. Best of all, though, is that all the people I pass strike me as being beyond compare, somehow suffused with uncommonness. It’s as if they all have lights inside that shine in the rarest of ways, as if some sort of peerless “beauty bright” is always present with each of them. In one sense, they are just the most ordinary people, but in another sense – the sense that’s steadily on the rise in me – they are utterly unparalleled, unsurpassed, and unsurpassable. It’s no wonder, I suppose, that I’ve taken to staring more and more these last few years, since I seem to be living in a wonderland that makes magic every moment.