Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet who is widely regarded as one of the greatest Victorian poets. Born in 1844, Hopkins produced a remarkable body of work that is known for its innovative use of language and rhythm. His poems often explore themes of nature, religion, and human emotions. Hopkins’ unique style, characterized by his use of “sprung rhythm” and vivid imagery, sets him apart from his contemporaries and continues to captivate readers to this day.
Hopkins’ poems are characterized by their striking originality and beauty. They are deeply rooted in his religious beliefs and his observations of the natural world. His works are filled with vivid descriptions of landscapes, capturing the essence of the world around him. Hopkins’ poems are also known for their intense emotional depth, exploring themes of despair, hope, and spiritual enlightenment.
Unique and Beautiful Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems
“The Windhover”
“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.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: 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.”
“Pied Beauty”
“Glory be to God for dappled things —
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Praise hím.”
“Spring”
“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.”
“Carrion Comfort”
“Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
and flee? 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, chéer.
Chéer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”
“God’s Grandeur”
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
“The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo”
“(Maidens’ heads have been seen, with) (Maidens’ heads have been seen, with)
gold upon them) (gold upon them)
gold upon them) (gold upon them)
(And girls heard laughing) (And girls heard laughing
(And girls heard laughing) (And girls heard laughing)
(And birds bow singing) (And birds bow singing)
(And birds bow singing) (And birds bow singing)
(And stones ring) (And stones ring)
(And stones ring) (And stones ring)
(And flowers brung) (And flowers brung)
(And flowers brung) (And flowers brung)
(And the air a round) (And the air a round)
(And the air a round) (And the air a round)
(With a sound)” (With a sound)”
“The Starlight Night”
“The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
— Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bids bid. Thereat mirth-magic regulates.
Men moulded of earth, made, and him made, and born
Man, of the molten maya, ééh?”
“The Wreck of the Deutschland”
“To Christ, Our Lord
I
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
II
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height: and the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
III
Yet I
II
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
IV
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height: and the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
V
Flung aloft
By thee
the dewdrop, the dewdrop
Flung back
by thee:
the hour-glass emptied,
and again
filled with sand.
And I not knowing
whether
joy or sorrow
for me
for thee,
for both,
and I not knowing
which.
The Dead
III
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
IV
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height: and the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
“The May Magnificat”
“May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season —
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring? —
Growth in every thing —
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
II
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all —
What is this? and whence? and where?
Honoré-d’-ohonoré
Pray you, tell me, shepherds, say.
III
Now, in her green mantle, blythe
Nature lieth with her lithe
Babe between her breasts.
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bearèth
Our Lord; alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res miranda.
By that rose we may well see
That he is God in persons three,
Pari forma.
“Hurrahing in Harvest”
“Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic —
