Gerard Manley Hopkins: The War Within Us

                                              In Honor of 

                                    St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

                                   Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field, 
And on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may; 
But be the war within, the brand we wield 
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled, 
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountains and continent,
Earth, all,  out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makers more and more)
Could crown career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

 The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,  (fourth edition) p. 106

( Question: How can a poet can evoke  so much more, in fewer words, than a philosopher, theologian, or psychologist who writes volume upon volume?)