Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Marwood]

Any opinions?

One of my favourite nineteenth century poets. I was up on the Pennine Moors near Rochdale the other day and was struck by a memory of Inversnaid:

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

[Jackson Richardson]

I did Hopkins for A level and much preferred Pope, who we also did. However I've recently come to recognise he is wonderful.

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; 5
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 past change: 10
Praise him.

[Sospira]

Hopkins is also one of my favourite poets. I love the rhythm, I suppose this would be called sprung rhythm. But whatever it's called it doesn't take on a symmetrical shape and rather has its own individual freer rhythmic shape, sort of like spoken English but intensified. It's so evocative of a wet, rambling in the countryside, with no apologies for anything dark, dirty or earthy.

'This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,'


I get a strong feeling from the rhythm, aided by the vocabulary, of something falling down, and again,

'In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home. '

But what are ' foam Flutes?'

I love the word 'Degged' and the rhythm of the line that follows

'Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,'

And how it is such a stark contrast to the rhythm of the lines before it and after in that stanza. Just makes it sound so natural and sprightly. I guess that line is iambic pentameter, at least modulated iambic pentameter.

The first poem I ever read by Hopkins and probably my favourite is 'The Windhover.'

[YesNo]

My favorite Hopkin's poem is "Spring and Fall" which I memorized long ago: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173665

In general the sound of his poetry keeps me focused on the poems and makes me want to reread them as if I were enchanted. In the case of Spring and Fall, the meaning is also enchanting.