Gerard Hopkins
Gerard Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins SJwas an English poet, convert to Catholicism, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. His manipulation of prosodyand his use of imagery established him after his death as an innovative writer of religious verse...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 July 1844
desired few fields flies hail sharp springs
I have desired to go / Where springs not fail, / To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail / And a few lilies blow,
dearest deep freshness lives
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things . . . ,
cries dead dearest lament letters lives sent
And my lament / Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent / To dearest him that lives alas! away.
creation lines miss
O then if in my lagging lines you miss / The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation.
darkness lay wrestling wretch year
That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
answer god jack lack
Just for lack / Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack / There God to aggrandize, God to glorify.
bright fire sitting
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!/ O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! / The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
cheap cliffs fall hold hung mind
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap / May who ne'er hung there.
birds breed build lord roots send thou work
Birds build - but not I build; no, but strain,/ Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. / Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
death dies life sleep
All Life death does end and each day dies with sleep
few sprung various
A few other little things; some in sprung rhythm, with various other experiments.
lost scourge sweating
I see / The lost are like this, and their scourge to be / As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
art contend endeavour indeed plead thou ways
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend / With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. / Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must / Disappointment all I endeavour end?
green storms swing
Where no storms come, / Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, / And out of the swing of the sea.