In 1877 Gerard Manley Hopkins was studying to be a Jesuit priest when he wrote a sonnet he dedicated to Christ and named The Windhover. It is easy to imagine how the student Hopkins (who was beset with bipolar disorder and suffered with long bouts of depression) would encounter creatures like the falcon pictured above — soaring high and freed from the constant melancholy that was his life, and then transpose those feelings into verse.
And so it was that he wrote The Windhover and dedicated it to Christ. One need not be a Christian (I am an atheist) to appreciate the “sprung rhythm“ and “sonnets of desolation” that Hopkins created:
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, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
The sonnet consists of three long verses — earthbound, the poet watches a great falcon (with noble French terms like “dauphin” and “chevalier” make sweeping circles in flight — like a skater does on ice.
Later, Hopkins uses the metaphor of a worn plough to characterize his daily struggle — after all rusty ploughs don’t shine as does the one that toils in the soil every day.
And then finally the last three lines erupt like embers falling and exploding in fire in splendid alliteration:
Fall
gall themselves
and gash gold-vermillion
as a final metaphor for the brilliance of the falcon (and Christ).
Throughout the poem the “sprung rhythm” and alliteration represent the best of Hopkins:
daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon
as does the intentional corruption of the word “achievement”:
the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
In his great poem Adam’s Curse William Butler Yeats describes writing poetry:
‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.
Hopkin’s poem seems like “a moment’s thought” — a majestic moment of complete adoration no question. Yet he articulated this thought in a style and fashion no one else has done before or since.
Gerard Manley Hopkins did not live to see any of his work published. He died in 1889 at the age of 44.