Iris DeMent: In the Spirit of Hopkins?

Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Let The Mystery Be - Iris DeMent H.Q. - YouTube   

Hurrahing in Harvest by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The First Stanza:

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?  

The Closure:

These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet. 

Ds

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Let The Mystery Be - Iris DeMent H.Q. - YouTube

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"Hurrahing in Harvest" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hurrahing in Harvest by Gerard Manley Hopkins

In previous autumns, I've not posted "Hurrahing in Harvest" because some readers might be put off by Hopkins' use of natural beauty an excuse to extol a Christian God. It seems obvious to me that one can easily substitute for that deity whatever source of inspiration one prefers, and that includes the possibility of not going beyond the beauties and ecstasy provided by the world of matter. Maybe joy can be explained physiologically. So what? It's still joy. It still feels good.

No, by definition, joy and ecstasy are more than feeling vaguely good. The issue gets into psychological territory that's difficult to articulate. It's hard to be logical about rapture, which is probably the reason that so many find it an avenue to religiosity.

The natural, material world leads Hopkins to Jesus. If it leads you to the Lord of Happy Barley, so what? The fact remains that nature--in this case autumn--can (should?) provide an explosion of intense sensuous delight if one is honestly looking. Witnessing.

One time when I was naively enthusing about southern Ohio hills, my more cynical college roommate argued that nature was full of mosquitoes and predation, and I needed to wake up to that. Well, yes. And there's the charming story of some politician's wife who remarked, "Nature is so pretty--what a shame it has to be outdoors."

But if one does not see and hear and smell nature's majesty as well as its quieter splendors, along with its pain and murders, one is needlessly eliminating a major source of both the calming and the dramatic varieties of joy. Humans seem to like Either-Or, Black-and-White in a world that's full of grey shades of contradiction. Why not rise to the grey occasion in which we find ourselves?

So I encourage everyone to read all of Hopkins' nature poetry with such things in mind. Nature, among other forces, led Hopkins to Catholicism (he converted and became a Jesuit priest). At least once in awhile, the same scenes can also lead to Happy Barley. Wallow in it. Call it magic.

(The photos are from a spot on a dirt road near Rt. 12 and the village of Jonesville in south-central Michigan).

Hurrahing in Harvest by Gerard Manley Hopkins