Departures

As the school year, both at St. John's and AACS, come to a close, it's difficult not to reflect on faces and hearts that won't be seen again, or that weren't seen as they ought to have been. There are many kinds of departures and distances surrounding my recent days, and as with friends who return, sometimes a familiar poem, recognized after a time away, becomes something known anew. This one comforts now:

The Lantern out of Doors

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night.
That interests our eyes. And who gets there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me, whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind,
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amend
There, eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind,
Their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins