by J.P. McCauley

Created on: December 10, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2010

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was truly original in his approach to poetry.  In an era of largely traditional verse, his experimental poetry in threw aside the conventional form of metre, and in doing so, changed the form of poetry.

        Binsey Poplars

           Felled 1879

  MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, 

  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, 

  All felled, felled, are all felled; 

    Of a fresh and following folded rank 

            Not spared, not one    

            That dandled a sandalled  

        Shadow that swam or sank 

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 

  O if we but knew what we do 

        When we delve or hew—   

    Hack and rack the growing green! 

        Since country is so tender 

    To touch, her being só slender, 

    That, like this sleek and seeing ball 

    But a prick will make no eye at all,  

    Where we, even where we mean 

            To mend her we end her, 

        When we hew or delve: 

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. 

  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

    Strokes of havoc únselve 

        The sweet especial scene, 

    Rural scene, a rural scene, 

    Sweet especial rural scene.

For a very long time prior to Hopkins, English poetry took on the Norman influence of a rhythmic structure.  In this structure, the stress on syllables repeatedly happened in the same place throughout the poem.  A good example of this is iambic pentameter -

“had WE but WORLD eNOUGH and TIME, / this COYness, LA-dy, WERE no CRIME” – where every second syllable is stressed.  Hopkins referred to this type of metre as “running rhythm.”  Looking to inspiration from the older Anglo-Saxon poetry, Hopkins developed what he referred to as “sprung rhythm.”

In addition to introducing his “sprung rhythm,” Hopkins is renowned for his striking language and imagery often accompanied by alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

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;

Hopkins had lived in Wales for some time, and the Welch language, with its emphasis on repeating sounds, greatly influences Hopkins poetic voice.

It cannot be said that the fresh look that Hopkins had toward poetry was influential in his time.  To influence an audience, one first must have an audience.  Hopkins works were unknown during his lifetime.  Hopkins work would have been unknown to us if not for the efforts of his friend Robert Bridges.  Hopkins had burned all of his early works when he became a Catholic priest, but Bridges had saved copies that Hopkins had sent him.

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