I took a class on Hopkins a few years ago with about 12 other students and one Loren Wilkinson of Regent College. It has proved to be one of the most influential classes I've taken in my life. Hopkins' poetry is no mere feel-good art, nor has it perfect poetic meter. What it does have is the kind of theological depth that when tasted, nourishes for long periods of time. Here is a beauty:
Binsley 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 so 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 unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
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 so 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 unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
3 comments:
". . . nor has it perfect poetic meter." Actually, Hopkins seemed to delight in unconventional meters and rhythms--and alliteration and other awkward sequences of sounds. I have never encountered anywhere else such seemingly unpronounceable sequences of ordinary English words, but my little sister loved them. She would rehearse them over and over until she could say them fluently, and then, as if by magic those seemingly ungainly poems were transfigured into works of unthinkable beauty. There are, probably, some less well done works among Hopkins' poems, but I would be very cautious about saying that any particular poem had less than perfect meter until I was sure I understood how Hopkins meant it to sound.
wisewit
Thanks wisewit! I suppose what I meant by less than perfect meter is that Hopkins did not feel the need to conform to a prescribed, or textbook, ideal of poetic meter. Thanks for the comment though, I see how that could sound. Hopkins' meter is really unique and beautiful. I for one would consider it perfect in its own way.
Well, I figured that that was what you meant, but I thought I might say something in case someone else out there reads this and gets confused. Maybe I should have worded it as a question--especially since I have to admit that I have only read a couple of Hopkins' poems. The rest I only heard (in bits and pieces) when my little sister was reciting them. Then again, maybe that's a better way to encounter his poems.
I think there's something uniquely Christian about Hopkins' poetry: Christ became one of us and came not into some ideal world where everything proceeds harmoniously but into our world where things often jar our senses and don't go as we think they should. Hopkins poems, in which seemingly jarring combinations of sounds turn out to be works of beauty, are a particularly apt expression of that. At least, that's my impression.
wisewit
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