Hopkins vs. Hewson?

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.

Those are the closing lines of one of my favorite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Caged Skylark.

I love Hopkins' poetry.

Glory be to God for dappled things- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim...

And then, from the same poem, perhaps my favorite lines in all of poetry:

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Those lines from Pied Beauty.

There's another poet I'm quite fond of too. Here are some of my favorie lines from his works.

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

What you don't have you don't need it now What you don't know you can feel it somehow What you don't have you don't need it now Don't need it now Was a beautiful day

Yes, those are the words to Beautiful Day penned by none other than Bono (aka Paul Hewson). Here are a few more pearls:

Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name

Grace
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything
...
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

If you're interested in art and culture I want to recommend an online magazine that I learned about this year called Catapult. I learned about it because a friend of mine, who is a terrific writer, had an essay of hers about the sacrament of laundry published there. They've just published a brief exchange between my colleague Jamie Smith and myself concerning dumbing down culture. This discussion was originally published in a student led publication at Calvin College where both Jamie and I teach in the philosophy department. Jamie worries over the loss of high culture among our students (and probably all twenty-somethings) and laments the fact that popular culture is "revelationally thin." I, on the other hand, reply to Jamie and defend the depth and substance of both popular culture and our students. I also confess there my low tolerance for arrogant academics. You be the judge as to who wins the argument about culture. And then, if you want, come back here and share your thoughts.