"St. Alphonsus Rodriguez" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
St. Alphonsus RodriguezThey also serve who stand and wait.
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus
Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
My "spot analysis":
St. Alphonse was the doorkeeper for a Jesuit monastery in Majorca. He intended to go into the priesthood early in life, but ended up going into his father's business, got married, and had childen. When his family died, he was too old to got to a seminary, so he attached himself as the porter to the local Jesuit house. It was a very simple job which involved him greeting visitors. It is said that he treated everyone who knocked as if they were Jesus. When he would hear a knock, he would say "Coming, Jesus." He developed a reputation for holiness by the simplicity and purity he brought to his ordinary task.
The poem compares wordly grandeur the clash of armies, the fall of empires, etc. - to the St. Alphonse's lowly task but concludes that God could crowd careers of conquest while Alfonso watched the door, which leaves the reader wondering which, ultimately, is the more valuable vocation.
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