Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins...
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems about the Mind and Thinking
Experiment in Divination: Voice and Character
by Rebecca Wolff
Intention to Escape from Him
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Man Carrying Thing
by Wallace Stevens
Museum Guard
by David Hernandez
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
by Robert Duncan
Panels for the Walls
by Cedar Sigo
Tang
by Bruce Cohen
The Needle
by Jennifer Grotz
Why I Am Not a Buddhist
by Charles Bernstein
Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

It was a hard thing to undo this knot

 
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention?
And many standing round a waterfall
See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand's breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling waters writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.






This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on July 28, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.