4 September 2020

Only for the Biodiverse

Except for those exiled in the remotest corners of our former Empire, I'm sure everybody knows the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins Societatis Iesu about Oxford ...

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark charmed, rook racked, river-rounded ... etc..

Apparently, there are now parakeets in the Parks (but we haven't heard a cuckoo this year).


There must be someone out there who would know how to incorporate parakeets into Fr Hopkins' verses.

I said parakeets, not Paracletes.

10 comments:

PM said...

Bless me Father,but I must confess that as a child I (and my classmates) did indeed confuse Paraclete and parakeet. Moreover, some of us wondered if 'laetificat' had something to do with felines. But later out teachers made us literate by teaching us Latin.

Thomas said...

How about "budgie-thronged"? Budgerigars are parakeets. I don't know if the Oxford flocks are of that particular kind, but they would at least have been familiar to Manley-Hopkins. Queen Victoria was presented with a pair in 1845, after which it became de rigeur for fashionable homes to have them too.

Pelerin said...

Parakeets first appeared in our local woods in Sussex over 30 years ago. I understand they grew a second set of feathers in order to survive our winters.

Zephyrinus said...

. . . “winding ancient Streets, with Parakeets . . .”

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. ABS figured out how to share the American Bishops public adoption of The Americanist Proposition/Heresy.

O, and give credit to the CIA, JC Murray and Henry Luce for they succeeded in, apparently, changing Catholic Doctor on Religious Liberty at Vatican Two. They won.

+++++++++++++++++++

1948 AmBishops collectively jump into the Americanist Heresy quicksand

Signed by Cardinals Dennis Doughty of Philadelphia, Edward Mooney of Detroit, Samuel Stritch of Chicago, Francis Spellman of New York, Richard Cushing of Boston, and others, the Pastoral Letter of 1948, “A Christian in Action” teaches American Catholics the American Proposition Heresy in opposition to Catholic, Church- State Doctrine.

The context of the letter raises other doctrine taught by Pope Leo XIII but does not refer to his Church-State doctrine.

Duplicitous much? Quote Pope Leo XIIl when he agrees with y'all but fall silent when it comes to Catholic Church-State Doctrine.

That is, this is an early example of the collective failure of The American Hierarchy to teach the truth to American Catholics.

They have been in schism ever since.

Thus, in 1948 The Catholic Church in America was already mired in the quicksand of the Americanist Heresy and was sinking fast.

ABS was born into this monstrous heresy/lie and, it goes without saying that Pope Pius XII did not correct the heresy/error/lie.

The great Fr John Clifford Fenton, long time editor of The American Ecclesiastical Review summarised Catholic Church-State Doctrine thusly -"Catholics could never hold the belief that the existence of multiple false religions in a state was a good thing in itself or that these religions have a "genuine God-given right to exist. Such a right belonged only to the one religion founded by Jesus Christ for all men."


https://www.docdroid.net/kq70PYd/the-christian-in-action-pdf

Hickory Bow said...

paradisal parakeets...

Scribe said...

O pie parakete....

Sue Sims said...

One can't, alas, just add a phrase to the poem. It's a conventional sonnet in structure, so five iambic feet per line, though Hopkins' trademark 'sprung rhythm' makes the second line - the one you quote - look much longer. The only thing I can think of, since you say that cuckoos have (presumably) been absent, is to eliminate them and rewrite:

Parakeet-parked, bell-swarmed, lark charmed, rook racked, river-rounded ...

It doesn't gain by the substitution, but hey, you asked...

Victor said...

I do wish ABS would, if he cannot restrain himself at all, at least stick to the topic of the post...

Atticus said...

"Budgieful, simply budgieful" (Bernard Matthews Hopkins).