| WILD air, world-mothering air, | |
| Nestling me everywhere, | |
| That each eyelash or hair | |
| Girdles; goes home betwixt | |
| The fleeciest, frailest-flixed | 5 |
| Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed | |
| With, riddles, and is rife | |
| In every least thing’s life; | |
| This needful, never spent, | |
| And nursing element; | 10 |
| My more than meat and drink, | |
| My meal at every wink; | |
| This air, which, by life’s law, | |
| My lung must draw and draw | |
| Now but to breathe its praise, | 15 |
| Minds me in many ways | |
| Of her who not only | |
| Gave God’s infinity | |
| Dwindled to infancy | |
| Welcome in womb and breast, | 20 |
| Birth, milk, and all the rest | |
| But mothers each new grace | |
| That does now reach our race— | |
| Mary Immaculate, | |
| Merely a woman, yet | 25 |
| Whose presence, power is | |
| Great as no goddess’s | |
| Was deemèd, dreamèd; who | |
| This one work has to do— | |
| Let all God’s glory through, | 30 |
| God’s glory which would go | |
| Through her and from her flow | |
| Off, and no way but so. | |
The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we BreatheGerald Manley Hopkins, Poems. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918
See the final verse here
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