Hopkins and the Kingfisher

All right so I think my world is coming together--a little, like this blog. Lately when I've been reading, and simply paying attention to life, there is something to do with a bird, or specifically a kingfisher. Not all my encounters with birds in the recent past has been about the kingfisher, but after reading The 4 Quartetes I find myself surrounded by kingfishers. And then like a little epiphany I opened my British Literature II anthology to Gerard Manley Hopkins section, and right there third poem in, is his poem, that was meant to find me, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" I mean really, is this happening to me? I read the poem and am not sure exactly what it's about. In the first stanza he mentions objects, colors, feelings, and then in the second stanza it changes to a religious tone, with refrences to humans. His inner poet is mixing with his inner priest...

"As Kingfishers Catch Fire"

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
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 do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: 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.

~L.