The first collection of Hopkins' poetry was not published until 1918. Until this point, Gerard Manley Hopkins was the forgotten poet of the nineteenth century.
Hopkins was born in 1844 in Stratford in Essex and at the age of 19 was granted a scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford. It was here that he came under the influence of the Oxford Movement, and was received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal Newman, much to the anguish of his staunchly Anglican parents. Hopkins left Oxford to high acclaim in 1866 and was initiated into the Jesuits in 1868, undertaking to live without the comforts he had grown up with, and burning the poetry he had written in his youth, saying he would "write no more, as not belonging to my profession". Despite the encouragement of his close friends, Coventry Patmore, Rev. Richard Dixon and Robert Bridges (the future poet laureate who was the first person to publish Hopkins' work), Hopkins refused to publish any of his poetry during his own lifetime, seeing it as incompatible with the life of a Jesuit priest. Perhaps Hopkins was aware whilst he was writing, as we his audience are aware now, that there is constant tension in his work between his primal, sensual love of nature, and his ascetic devotion to an unforgiving God.
In 1874, Hopkins moved to North Wales and began to study the language there. It is the lilting, mellifluous tone of Welsh that we find in Hopkins' poetry: he claimed that the language much better captured the sounds and senses of nature. Under the guidance of his superior at the theological college in St Beuno's, Hopkins took up poetry once more and in 1875 composed "The Wreck of the Deutschland".
Hopkins was ordained in 1877 and served in various Jesuit churches and institutes around the country He was appointed professor of Greek literature at University College, Dublin, in 1884, but found the climate and lifestyle not to his liking. He became ill and fell into a deep depression. This malaise is reflected in his Terrible Sonnets, which are amongst the most bleak and forlorn poems in the English language.
"The Wreck of the Deutschland"
In 1875 Hopkins, deeply affected by the death of five Franciscan nuns in a shipwreck, broke his poetical silence to compose the challenging long poem "the Wreck of the Deutschland". The nuns had been exiled to Germany on account of their faith, and Hopkins finds in them the bravery that he felt on converting to Roman Catholicism. The first part of the poem outlines a battle between Hopkins and God, where God is trying to make Hopkins realize that the drowning of the nuns was a divine act. The outlandish rhythm helps to give the impression that Hopkins is under the influence of a higher power, that he is committing to poetry an experience of great spiritual importance.
Hopkins' mind then moves back to his own conversion to Catholicism and the agony he went through:
"I did say yes
O at lightening and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God…"
These lines capture perfectly the somewhat hysterical voice which Hopkins makes his own when contemplating divinity. Hopkins feels that he was trapped between Hell and a God who expected too much of him, like Scylla and Charibdis, or the nuns on the Deutschland: "where, where was a, where was a place?"
After the emotional distress engendered by this recollection, Hopkins reverts to a consideration of natural beauty to ease his troubled mind. His naivety, exuberance, and recognition of the beauty in nature are all evidenced here. Hopkins "kisses his hand" to the stars in a gesture of abandon to the glory of God and nature. One senses Hopkins' contentment at this part of the poem. The everyday speech and sense of spiritual crisis followed by spiritual resolution give us an insight into the very core of human experience.
The second part of The Wreck of the Deutschland is less successful than the first. Hopkins turns towards religious theorizing rather than the personal contemplation of the first twenty stanzas. Hopkins, like many of staunch religious belief, refuses to accept the possibility of other truths. Catholicism is the only way, and those who reject this will go to Hell. Hopkins' lonely existence and lack of personal relationships outside of those of priest to parishioner means that the poem is lacking in real human emotion, for all its personal insight, it is the experience of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and fails to take into consideration the existence of a communal human existence.
"God's Grandeur"
Hopkins' theory of 'inscape' is best exemplified in "God's Grandeur". Hopkins affirms that "The world is charged with the Grandeur of God". However, due to the increasingly materialistic nature of the age, man is unable to appreciate the omnipotence of God: "all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil… ". The image of God's power flaming out "like shining from shook foil" is one of Hopkins' best, and succeeds in capturing the 'inscape' of God's power. One gets the feeling that Hopkins is stretching language to its very limits, accepting that that which he is trying to express is beyond all expression: he is representing his own experience and hoping that his readers can empathize.
Hopkins believes that true knowledge is to be found in the study of nature. By cutting himself off from nature, man is cutting himself off from God. Hopkins' indictment of industrialism is an indictment of modern humanity itself. Hopkins' skill in this poetry is his success in combining this censure of modernity with an evocation of nature which is free from the tarnish of industry:
"And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."
"The Windhover"
"The Windhover" is perhaps the most successful of Hopkins' poetry in its ability to brilliantly capture the 'inscape' of its subject - the falcon. Like so often in his work, however, Hopkins cannot leave the poem as a tribute to nature, but insists on dragging God into the poem, ruining the power of the evocation of the majesty of the bird. Hopkins has come upon the falcon early one morning, and it is his joy in the discovery that gives the poem much of its power:
"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air…"
Hopkins is in many ways too civilized in his writing - he is unable to leave his enjoyment of the falcon's beauty as a tribute to the primal attraction of nature. By searching for a moral lesson in nature, Hopkins reduces it to a lesson for his reader. Didacticism is Hopkins' most off-putting trait.
The second part of this poem descends into the realms of preaching. Hopkins gets away with this when the thought process (which led to the philosophical moral at the end of the poem) is clearly followed by the reader. In "The Windhover", however, this is not the case. This poem is interesting because Hopkins himself seems aware of his habit of imposing moral endings on poems whose real skill is in their evocation of nature. Hopkins' description of the falcon does capture some of the primal spirit of the bird. The end of the poem clods in its attempt to endow with moral signification an experience which was simply a moment of nature's wonder.
"Felix Randal"
Felix Randall concerns the death of one of Hopkins' parishioners, a farrier by the name of Felix Randal. If criticism must be leveled at Hopkins, then it is that he often sacrifices human feeling at the expense of style. Hopkins' sorrow at Randal's death seems oddly strained: "Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? My duty all ended… ". There are several issues to consider here. It is probable that Hopkins was a homosexual. Critics have used his obsession with the word "pied" as evidence of his love of things ambiguous. Hopkins, of course, would never have acknowledged these feelings, and would have been horrified at the thought that they even existed. The sorrow Hopkins feels for the loss of Felix is more based around the loss of his physical presence than any sense of friendship: "his mould of man, big- boned and hardy-handsome… ". Hopkins feels conflict at the emotions he harbours for this man. These conflicts are evidenced as much in the strained rhythm of the poem as in the language. Hopkins seems strangely removed from the human experience, not seeing Randal's death as part of a greater human tragedy, but as an individual experience in the life of Gerard Manley Hopkins; a suitable subject for a poem and nothing more.
"Carrion Comfort"
This is the first, and perhaps the best of Hopkins' last, despairing Terrible Sonnets. Written as Hopkins pined, ill and lonely, contemplating his own death. It is almost ironic that it is only in these last, beautiful sonnets that Hopkins manages to coordinate style and language to create his most affecting and enduring poetry. The resolution at the beginning of "Carrion Comfort" is inspiring in its refusal to give in:
"Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;"
The emphasis on the stressed "Not" at the beginning of the poem highlights not only Hopkins' resolve not to give in, but also the strength of the temptation itself. Carrion comfort represents despair - the comfort of being able to abandon all hope. When Hopkins' says he "kissed the rod", this signifies the acceptance of a Christian that despair and depression are sent by God to test us and that it is only by enduring them that we can attain true happiness.
The struggle here is reminiscent of the battle between God and Hopkins at the beginning of "The Wreck of the Deutschland". However, here it is Hopkins attempting to vanquish despair rather than God trying to vanquish Hopkins. The battle here is won with the victorious "I can".
Hopkins relates his own struggle with despair to the nuns' struggle onboard the Deutschland:
"Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer."
The enthusiasm here is tempered by Hopkins' questioning spirit, which in the next line asks: "Cheer whom though?" Hopkins does doubt the power of his own faith. It is the strength of his face which poses him with such complicated moral dilemmas; Hopkins is always trying to find perfection in religion. This is not always possible. As the Terrible Sonnets progress, we are voyeurs in the slow unraveling of Hopkins' faith. The strength of this faith, however, is demonstrated by his refusal to give in to carrion comfort.
Style
'Sprung rhythm' is a rhythmic style which Hopkins uses to great effect in much of his poetry, specifically when he wants to convey moments of great emotional intensity. English poetry is usually iambic, and much of the poetry of the nineteenth century (especially Romantic verse) was written in iambic form.
Hopkins wanted his poetry to represent a mode of existence that was outside of everyday experience, so that the reader became part of the verse itself. Sprung rhythm alerts us to a transcendental state of otherness in the poetry, and works through trying to emulate the meter of everyday speech, whilst remaining within the bounds of poetry. The most famous, and greatest example of sprung rhythm is to be found in "The Starlight Night": "Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies!" Here, the naïve enthusiasm that Hopkins feels for the beauty of the night sky is captured not only in the language, but also in the meter. It is in this way that Hopkins attempts to capture the 'inscape' of his subjects.