Electus ex millibus

My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.

Dilectus meus candidus et rubicundus;
electus ex millibus.

Ἀδεφιδός μου λευκός και πυρρός,
ἐκλελοχισμένος ἀπὸ μυριάδων.

The bride continues:

His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside streams of water,
bathed in milk,
sitting beside a full pool.
His cheeks are like beds of spices,
mounds of sweet-smelling herbs.
His lips are lilies,
dripping liquid myrrh.
His arms are rods of gold,
set with jewels.
His body is polished ivory,
bedecked with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set on bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His mouth is most sweet,
and he is altogether desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem. (5:11–16, ESV)

Verse 14 in Jerome's Vulgate adds a reference to "hyacinthis:" "Manus illius tornatiles, aureae, plenae hyacinthis." Does "hyacinthis" refer to flowers or to jewels?

I don't have a critical edition of Hopkins (is there one?), just selected poems scattered in a few books. But Hopkins must have this verse in mind. Was he praying it in the Latin? Did he just have his Bible open? Or was the Song of Solomon 5:10 present in the Mass or Office of a given day?

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string bells, 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 What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—

Christ—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.

For Hopkins, the bride's description of the bridegroom is no mere assemblage of images, but an affirmation of creaturely dignity, precisely in each creature's nature and individuality. The creatures each have their own nature. But each creature creatures in the same way. Therefore man, justified and inhabited by sanctifying grace, the beginning of the new creation, acts justly—or, in Hopkin's words, "justices." The graced man graces. The Christified man Christs.

And so the poem is ultimately not about God's presence in creation but about the body of Christ. The head of the body is radiant and ruddy, with a golden head and raven-black hair, dove-like eyes, cheeks like sweet-smelling spices, lips like lilies, dripping chrism. Below the head, Christ's limbs are lovely: arms golden and floral attached to an ivory and sapphire body, alabaster legs set on gold.

This is us. We are the ten thousand. His lily lips drip liquid myrrh onto our heads. When we persevere in justice. When we keep grace. God sees not us but his Son. The Son is lovely in us, his body, his ten thousand.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

Τότε οἱ δίκαιοι ἐκλάμψουσιν ὡς ὁ ἥλιος ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῶν.

tunc iusti fulgebunt sicut sol in regno Patris (Matthew 13:43)

Source: He was not (yet) familiar with Hopkins, but I am just riffing on John of Forde, a son of Saint Bernard, who has a commentary on the Song of Songs which was recently recommended to me ...