Today's poem

Hopkins' devotion to Christianity. In the poem, each quatrain represents each sense. Simultaneously, I recall indriya in Buddhism. The first and second quatrains are hearing, the third is eyesight, the fourth is taste, the fifth is smell, and the sixth is touch. The poem attracts me so much, for I feel Christianity by, especially, terms 'ELECTED Silence', 'uncreated light' (Genesis I), and 'the Lord'. In the last quatrain, Hopkins selected one of the three counsels of perfection: 'Poverty'. The fifth (smell) and sixth (touch) quatrains seem to be strange for me. Just in such stanzas, there could be a hidden riddle or called truth. The beginning 'ELECTED Silence' (really great, I think) dominates the world in the poem, a clue to create light from 'the uncreated light'. Silence is the source of the birth of something, back to tabula rasa. As if feeling before practice in Eiheiji (永平寺).

The Habit of Perfection by Gerard Manley Hopkins

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

(from wiki)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Gerard_Manley_Hopkins/The_Habit_of_Perfection