Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 2nd ed.

1930

Brasch PR4803 H44 A17 1930

London: Oxford University Press; Humphrey Milford

Gerard Manley Hopkins experimented with language and prosody. Hopkins’ language is striking. In ‘The Windhover,’ he describes the ‘dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,’ compounding adjectives and playing with alliteration and assonance. Admiring the bird’s mastery as it hovers in the air while hunting its prey, controlling the wind, before it swoops downwards, Hopkins’ bird is a metaphor for Christ and divine epiphany. Turning away from conventional poetic metres, Hopkins explored new rhythms, especially sprung rhythm, anticipating the free verse employed by modernists.