My Dragon?

11 Feb 2024 | Humankind | 0 comments

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;

The times are winter, watch, a world undone….

And I not help….

 

Or what is else? There is your world within.

There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.

’’Your will is  law in that small commonweal.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889), The Times are Nightfall, (revised 1885).

Notes from the Compiler

In China, the dragon has represented the magnetic attraction of ambition, charisma and power: a positive symbol of human aspiration. In the Western world, the dragon has been feared as a demonic figure threatening Satanic evil, chaos and destruction. The Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins was deeply depressed in Dublin, partly by his mundane work at the university and partly by his sympathy with the Irish desire for Home Rule in 'that small commonweal' misruled by England. Some have doubted that he wrote the last three lines because they are not in his handwriting. But he certainly knew about the 'inscape' of people and things, and may well have detected the threat of inner demons or 'dragons' that can tempt and even subvert the disciple of Jesus. In the Bible, the Psalmist identifies God as the one who ‘broke the heads of the dragons’ (Psalm 74:13).

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