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.
····
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.
Those lines prepare us to find the fiery dawn of a religious vocation hastening the expectant soul upon her way. Gerard left Oxford. He spent some six months at the Birmingham Oratory, teaching in the school and enjoying the future Cardinal's advice and friendship. Then, in the spring of 1868—and apparently to the surprise of everyone—he offered his life to the Society of Jesus. Now, as he was an incorrigible individualist, the wisdom of this all-significant step may well have seemed an open question, even to those who knew him best. But Newman, at least, greeted the news approvingly. "Don't call 'the Jesuit discipline hard,'" he wrote: "it will bring you to Heaven." So the great and intricate sacrifice was begun. On the bare objective side, Father Hopkins' career is quickly told. One hears of him as "select preacher" in London, and again back in Oxford, at St. Aloysius' church. The one available portrait of the young priest pictures him during this latter mission: it shows a face of most delicate and chastened beauty, with noble forehead and chin of extraordinary determination—-
