I'm inserting here a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
that has always enchanted me by its use of language.
Whenever I read it I say to myself: Self, why don't you
ever come up with phrases like "hutch of tasty lust"
or "plushy sward", and why don't you know what "ruck
and reel" means? This is not one of Hopkins' fancier
metrical pieces - the joy is in the words.
(Note: "whorled" and "shelled" should have 2 syllables).

THE HABIT OF PERFECTION

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shelled, eyes with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
Thus ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine.

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street,
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage-feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured at nor spun.

There's an interesting article (review) re Hopkins in the current New York Review of Books (not the Times).

Bob

This is the very poem that almost persuaded me I wanted to become a nun. I settled for writing bad imitations of Hopkins and became a Presbyterian.

But yes, I return often and wishfully to the delicious language of Hopkins, and never miss an opportunity to read the poems aloud to others.

The trouble with Hopkins is, unless you have an edition with his own transcription, quite a few of his lines are ambiguous as to how to stress them--which in anyone else would be a metrical fault.

He should have set them to music.

E. A. K.

Now that you mention it, E.A.K., it seems surprising that Hopkins has NOT been set to music--at least, none that I know of. Anybody else know?

As for the ambiguity, I would choose to read the lines with natural emphasis, regardless of what Hopkins thought he was doing with his sprung rhythms. IMHO, only a master can get away with having "theories" of meter, and then display those powerful and successful eccentricities. The "proof" is, there are no successful imitations that I know of.

He wrote a lot of metrical verse, of course, as in Gail's post above.
For all his exposition of sprung rhythm, I read most of his work as metrical with variations, and if you just swing into the stresses there's a fine rhythm to it.
There are exceptions, like Windhover, which I read as more or less free verse.
He studied the Welsh forms, and some say that's where sprung rhythm originated, though I can't say, not being a Welsh speaker.
He tends not to be popular with the New Formalists, which seems a pity.
Best regards,
David

I pray that I may never be so corseted that I can't flow with a Hopkins line.

He is already music.

As an ex-singer I'm very aware of the perils of adding music to fine poetry. Only one recent English composer could have attempted it, Benjamin Britten, and I can't think of any Hopkins settings by him. He was deeply responsive to poetry and probably realised that music would be intrusive and destructive.

Anyone who wants to hear sublimely set English poetry should listen to Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings."

Some of the greatest English poems are illuminated but not destroyed.
Janet

PS--I found that Samuel Barber has set Hopkins's "A Nun Takes the Veil".


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited April 25, 2004).]

A web search will indicate that several composers have put Hopkins to music--Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem are the only names I recognized. I don't know their settings but would like to. Over the years I've heard art song versions of various poems, and some leave me cold--not that I'm a qualified judge--but others have kept my affection to this day.

The poem atop this thread is a real beauty, an early one at that. He was in his early 20s.

My adoration for Hopkins knows no bounds. If anyone's interested, recently I featured him on my site:

http://katebenedict.com/LectioHopkins.htm

I've also been writing a series of poems based on his life and written in his style. I feel as if I've been channeling the man. (First I included a few here, but then I thought it might not be appropriate on this thread. I'll simply make them available to anyone who might be interested. Just PM me.)

Kate,
You've chosen some very moving GMH poems.
Lacking your scruples, here's my tribute to that fine, sad, tormented man.
Please send me your Hopkins poems.
Best wishes,
David


To Gerard Manley Hopkins

Your spirit hovered quivering, poised on air
of sense and sound, charged like a lightning rod:
now flashing out to seize the grace of God,
now plummeting in darkness and despair -
despair! Did wisdom really bring you there,
where tired generations trod and trod,
where feet convey no feeling, iron-shod,
where hopelessness hangs heavy everywhere?

Sometimes I wonder, did you understand,
without the dark your candle could not glow?
Your soul was tortured by self-reprimand,
self-crucified, self-loathing; yet I know
the God you loved and hated took your hand
at last, and led you safe where no storms blow.

I read Kate Benedict's selections & commentary - all wonderful, and I was especially pleased to be reminded of
the "terrible sonnets."

Whenever I hear people speak of a psychological problem
as something one ought to "snap out of" because "It's
all in your head", I think of those magnificent lines:

"O the mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there."

Amen to that.

That's true, Gail. The "snap out of it" mindset seems puritanical too me; it despises deep emotion -- deeply human emotion. Cure it, get over it, snow it with pills! Otherwise, you might have to, what, take a sabbatical from work, withdraw for a while, taken an inward journey. Shirk! I'm all for experiencing thse things, deeply, honestly, humbly, and, like Hopkins, with a spirit of numinous terror and awe. Good thing for literature there was no Prozac in his day!

Kate
I must declare my pagan soul and confess that it is purely the music that pleases me in Hopkins.

I also confess that looking downwards for six months seems comparable to the English musical-monologist, Cyril Fletcher's, Herbert Bostril, who tried to breathe through one nostril.
Honesty compels me to say this. However he produced the poems, I'm grateful. Spiritual discipline is essential for any serious artist.

The reference to which I refer seems to have gone from the thread.
Janet


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited April 25, 2004).]

Thanks, Gail, Kate, David and everyone for your contributions to this memorable thread. Our Queen's, Belfast, English Honours year 'did' GMH's poems way back in the Fifties. I (then into Ango-Catholicism) was particularly taken by 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', but was most amused by the reaction of anotherwise liberally minded Presbyterian classmate, who took great exception to the characterisation of Luther as 'beast of the waste wood'.

Will chip in with the neo-Wordsworthian '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 theology means nothing to me these days , but I still respond to the musicality and rhythmical virtuosity. Margaret.

I have to confess I never paid much attention to his stuff until now (being repelled by the ornateness of the language, mostly), but it's amazing how many folks were affected by his writings. Here's a piece from Charles Wright's book Black Zodiac that was fairly interesting. There are several others in the book that seem to have a Hopkins-ish feel (heavily colored by Wright's own style).

Great thread. Cool stuff; thanks for posting.

-eaf


Jesuit Graves

Midsummer. Irish overcast. Oatmeal-colored sky.
The Jesuit pit. Last mass
For hundreds whose names are incised on the marble wall
Above the gravel and grassless dirt.
Just dirt and the small stones–
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhow strict, how self-effacing.

Not suited for you, however, Father Bird-of-Paradise,
Whose plumage of far wonder is not formless and not faceless,
Whatever you might have hoped for once.
Glasnevin Cemetery Dublin, 3 July 1995.
For those who would rise to meet their work,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthat work is scaffolding.

Sacrifice is the cause of ruin.
The absence of sacrifice is the cause of ruin.
Thus the legends instruct us,
North wind through the flat-leaved limbs of the sheltering trees,
Three desperate mounds in the small, square enclosure,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsouls God-gulped and heaven-hidden.

P. Gerardus Hopkins, 28 July 1844-8 June 1889, Age 44.
And then the next name. And then the next,
Soldiers of misfortune, lock-step into a star-colored tight dissolve,
History's hand-me-ons. But you, Father Candescence,
You, Father Fire?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxWhatever rises comes together, they say. They say.

Which strongly suggests, Ethan that I should acquaint myself more fully with the works of Charles Wright. Many thanks for posting. Interesting how one thing leads to a (highly appropriate) on this site,
Margaret.