Born in the year of Joseph Smith’s death, and gone himself only forty-four years later, Gerard Manley Hopkins lived a rich and difficult life. As a young man, he had the gift of seeing the Creator’s hand in nature. This sacramental view of nature drew him to Roman Catholicism and eventually to a vocation as a Jesuit priest. Not just the heavens, but everything in the world declares the glory of God, and Hopkins could see even a leaf as a “tabernacle for the sun”—or, perhaps, a tabernacle for the Son.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 
     As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 
     Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's 
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 
     Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 
     Selves—goes its self; myself it speaks and spells, 
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices; 
     Keeps grace; that keeps in all his goings graces; 
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is— 
     Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, 
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 
     To the Father through the features of men's faces.

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