Poem of the Day: ‘Barnfloor and Winepress’

In 1865, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), still an undergraduate at Oxford and still an Anglican, composed today’s Poem of the Day, “Barnfloor and Winepress.” The following spring, he would give up poetry for Lent. In July of that year, 1866, he would resolve to become a Roman Catholic. The rest of his life, from that time forward, is a familiar story to us now.But in 1865, he was thinking his way forward theologically by way of his own most intuitive medium — writing this poem. Its title taken from Deuteronomy 16, the poem alludes to the Lord’s injunction to the Israelites, on the border of the promised land, to celebrate there the Feast of Tabernacles, with the fruits of the harvest, bread and wine.In four stanzas of tetrameter couplets, Hopkins connects this harvest with Christ’s body and blood, the feast of Tabernacles with the sacrifice of the cross. As the poem makes most urgently clear for its own author, the Eucharist becomes the feast of abundance, uniting those who receive it with that sacrifice — “we are so grafted on His wood” — and, by implication, the promised land of eternal life. Barnfloor and Winepress by Gerard Manley Hopkins Thou that on sin’s wages starvest, Behold we have the joy in harvest: For us was gather’d the first-fruits For us was lifted from the roots, Sheaved in cruel bands, bruised sore, Scourged upon the threshing-floor; Where the upper mill-stone roof’d His head, At morn we found the heavenly Bread, And on a thousand Altars laid, Christ our Sacrifice is made! Those whose dry plot for moisture gapes, We shout with them that tread the grapes: For us the Vine was fenced with thorn, Five ways the precious branches torn; Terrible fruit was on the tree In the acre of Gethsemane; For us by Calvary’s distress The wine was rackèd from the press; Now in our altar-vessels stored Is the sweet Vintage of our Lord. In Joseph’s garden they threw by The riv’n Vine, leafless, lifeless, dry: On Easter morn the Tree was forth, In forty days reach’d Heaven from earth; Soon the whole world is overspread; Ye weary, come into the shade. The field where he has planted us Shall shake her fruit as Libanus, When He has sheaved us in His sheaf, When he has made us bear His leaf.— We scarcely call that banquet food, But even our Saviour’s and our blood, We are so grafted on His wood. ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past, together with the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘Barnfloor and Winepress’

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