"As Kingfishers Catch Fire"

I'm borrowing a book from my mother, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, by James Martin, SJ.  The author quotes a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889, Jesuit priest) in the context of discussing what it means to be who you are - who God has made you to be.  Although I may have read it before, I don't remember and it is like discovering a small gem.  (I might even have to memorize it!)

I think the part that speaks to me most is the second stanza.  I love the image of grace in which God sees in us - we who by that very grace are freed to be who we are meant to be - the beauty of Christ.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire 

by Gerard Manley Hopkins 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.