The Lantern out of Doors
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kÃnd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins
The voice of this poem principally comes from that of a narrator, who describes his feelings as he watches a light with interest. In the first stanza, he thinks wonderingly about the owner of that light and his or her destination. The setting is somewhat eerie: he thinks “Who goes there?” like a guard, alert for signs of danger, as he watches “down the darkness wide, his wading light.” The adverb “wading” gives me the picture of a wavering light, moving through a dense liquid medium: the darkness. The adjective “wide” intensifies the ghostly imagery, making us feel the vastness of the darkness, which makes the light seem smaller.
In the second stanza, he discusses what sort of people pass by in this darkness. “Men go by me,” he writes, “whom either beauty bright/In mould or mind or what not else makes rare…” These people are “rare”, beautiful physically or intellectually or in some other way. In other words, all men that go by him are somehow uniquely beautiful and precious. These men “rain against our much-thick and marsh air/Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.” Men are the lights that he sees, shedding brilliance against the stifling boggy air in which he dwells…until they are snuffed out, either by death or distance, beyond his sight.
The third stanza emphasizes this last point by repeating it: “Death or distance soon consumes them: wind/What most I may eye after, be in at the end/I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.” Even those that he most “eye[s] after”, the lights he tries to observe the longest, eventually are quenched. The last line is dismissive, “and out of sight is out of mind.” Once they vanish from sight, he no longer wonders about them.
But, even though he no longer minds these faltering lights, “Christ minds.” Hopkins writes about the comforting spiritual truth that “Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend/There, eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind,/Their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend.” These lights cannot depend upon the “interested” eyes of fellow men who observe them until they depart or die. Rather, they must depend upon Christ, who eyes, wants, haunts, and kindly follows them with the intent of ransoming and rescuing them. He, unlike fickle human bystanders, is a true Friend: first, fast (loyal), and last.
In this poem, I believe that life is personified as a wide dark bog: an eerie, dangerous place. Human beings “wade” through this bog like solitary lights, viewing each other with “interest” (and perhaps warily, like guards who demand “Who goes there?”), and recognizing the beauty and rarity of each individual light. Yet as soon as the light is quenched, or wades out of sight, they lose interest and become self-absorbed again, forgetting about the beautiful light that so entranced them. Christ, on the other hand, does not forget. He loves and yearns after these lights, haunting them, following with kind intent, not losing them in the dark mire. He alone is their friend, and they can turn to no other but Him for rescue and ransom from the darkness.
The poem is divided into four stanzas: the first two are quatrains, the second two contain three lines. Throughout the poem, Hopkins reverses word order, placing objects before their verbs and nouns before their modifiers. I don’t really understand why he does this or how this contributes to the overall meaning of the poem itself, but I love the resulting cadence of the words, and the way it sounds when read aloud. He also uses alliteration in the following instances: the “w” sound in the lines 3 and 4; “beauty bright”; “mould or mind”; “death or distance”; “foot follows”; “ransom, rescue”; and “first, fast, friend.”
All of these elements combined create a stimulating, ear-pleasing poem that contains a comforting message about Christ’s love, even in the midst of our bleak lives. I believe that it also encourages individuals to care about their companions on earth even when circumstances make it difficult.
