The Poetical Works Of Gerard Manley Hopkins [Hardcover ed.] 019811883X, 9780198118831

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THE POETICAL WORKS OF

Gerard Manley Hopkins T H I S long-awaited complete edition of the poetry offers serious students far more help than has been available hitherto. The texts take into account all the manuscripts, and include the editor's interpretation of the author's prosodic intentions. Any study of Hopkins's poetic development will be aided by the chronological arrangement not only of the poems but of the major variant read­ ings from the drafts. Early and late versions of some dozen poems are printed side by side. Readers will find glosses on thousands ofwords, many annotated here for the first time, the neglected early half of his output, before the 'Deutschland', being given full attention. The headnote to each poem sets out its intellectual or biographical background, and provides guidance to critical articles on it, particularly those too recent for inclusion in Dunne's Comprehensive Bibliography of Hopkins. The detailed commentary quotes or refers to a wealth of parallels in Hopkins's prose writings, and directs scholars to areas for further research. Professor MacKenzie's intimate knowledge of the manuscripts results in separate descriptions of every draft, fair-copy, and sig­ nificant transcript of each poem. These are cross-referenced to their reproductions in the editor's two-volume Hopkins Poetic Facsimiles , in which the sequence and numbering of the poems are those of the OET, making them companion volumes. A substantial introduction unfolds the history of each album of poetic manuscripts (A, B, etc.), with a penetrating analysis of Hopkins's prosodic signs and use of accidentals. Because of ambiguities disclosed, the editor argues that a definitive edition may be beyond our reach; but the new light he throws on every aspect of the poetry should prove a major stimulus to Hopkins criticism.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF

Gerard Manley Hopkins EDITED

BY

NORMAN H. MACKENZIE

CLARENDON PRESS 1990

·

OXFORD

Oxford University Press, Walton Stree� Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford NerD York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi PetalingJaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape To11J11 M,elbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press (USA)

© Editorial matter Norman H MacKenzie IIJ90 Poems by Hopkins © Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered, Ir4 Mount Stree� London WIY 6AH, r990 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanica� photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hopkins, Gerard Manley, r8,u-r889 The poetical works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. II. MacKenzie, Norman H. (Norman I. Title Hugh), r9r5-

82I'.8 ISBN o--u;-8r r883-X Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hopkins, Gerard Manley, r8'14-r889. The poetical works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. (Oxford English texts) Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. MacKenzie, Norman H. II. Title.

P�803.H#r7

rl)89

8d.8

88-29r35

ISBN o--u;-8r r883-X Set byJoshua Associates Ltd., Oxford Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd., Guildford and King's Lynn

For Rita Catherine and Ronald

A CKN O WLE D G E M E N T S GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS is not ordinarily thought of as a learned writer, but his intelligent curiosity, especially as an undergraduate, led him into many unfrequented corners where an editor has to make his own way-a delightful if time-consuming pursuit. Though the contributions of rare-book dealers to the scholarly world are seldom recognized, unless I had been able with their aid to surround myself with the sorts of books which Hopkins himself knew, such as piquant Victorian speculations in philology, this long-promised edition might have been still longer deferred. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the friendly research environ�ent pro­ vided by the Douglas Library at Queen's, which, founded three years before Hopkins was born, remains rich in works acquired during his life­ time while maintaining a liberal policy on new books and journals. I have also benefited from the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto and its Institute of Medieval Studies, and from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley with their multi-million holdings. To the Bodleian Library I owe many courtesies during numerous visits, especially from David Rogers, who, e.g., accompanied me on two excursions to Scotland Yard's Forensic Docu­ ment Examination Laboratory, where Dr Seeley, the Director, showed much interest in the problem of discriminating between Hopkins's entries and those by Bridges. It was Dr Rogers who persuaded Bodley to have its own Infra-red Image Converter constructed (making it the first great library in the world, so far as we know, to be so equipped), and Dr Edward Hall of Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and Art History who designed the machine. For special helpfulness I express my gratitude to the librarian of the Oxford Union Society, Raymond Walters; to Ronald Browne of the Writers' Library, Mount Street (later of the British Library); and Taylor Milne of the University of London Institute of Historical Research; also to the librarians of Heythrop College and Cambridge University Library; the archivists of the Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire Archives in Delapre Abbey; and Fr. Leonard Boyle, OP, of the Vatican Library, Rome. Many specialists have shared their expertise with me. Hopkins's Latin and Greek poems have been freshly translated for this edition by Colin Hardie, late Senior Tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford. He also provided extensive annotations, on which my commentary is mostly based. Ross Kilpatrick, Head of the Department of Classics at Queen's, has been tire­ less in solving a number of conundrums created by the poet's avoidance of

viii

Acknowledgements

commonplace syntax in Latin and Greek, as in English. A Horatian expert, Ross also identified the source of No. 86, 'Not kind ! to freeze me with fore­ cast', when I reported my suspicion that it was a free translation from the classics. Other classical scholars who have offered useful suggestions have been Harold Guite and Alexander McKay of McMaster University and Frederick Winter, Emeritus Professor in the University of Toronto. Fr. Robert Boyle, SJ, has allowed me to reprint his translation of 'Ad Matrem Virginem ' , No. 9 1 . For Welsh, Dr Marie Surridge, head o f the Department o f French at Queen's, a Welsh-speaking linguist trained at Oxford, devoted much care to the two Welsh poems. The comments of Beryl S. Williams and Christoph Kuper were also valuable. In Art History the directors and staff of London galleries provided information concerning the acquisition dates of various paintings which I thought might have influenced Hopkins: my thanks go to the National Gallery, the Warburg Institute, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the Royal Academy. The members of the Queen's Theological College were always at hand to discuss theological questions. On scientific subjects I submitted my interpretations to many highly qualified experts. As an amateur bird-watcher I cherish the delectable memory of discussing the identity of the bird(s) in 'Henry Purcell' with Sir Peter Scott in a huge tropical walk-in aviary at Slimbridge, while a ruby­ throated humming-bird deftly removed from a lady nearby a strand of soft silver hair needed to perfect her nest. Bruce Campbell took me bird­ watching around Oxford, and Martin Edwards, head of the Department of Physics at the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario, a world authority on birds and the environment, has contributed his opinion on delicate problems. I record my gratitude to the windhovers near one Jesuit college, where the Fathers routinely greeted me with the lament that no kestrels had been observed since my previous visit, for invariably putting on for me a display so characteristic that I 'caught' it from a quarter of a mile away. Experts in the history of medicine, Robin Price of the W ellcome Institute, London, and Samuel Shortt, a Queen's specialist, supplied me with facts and references. Geologists and librarians in the Natural History section of the British Museum took endless trouble over the fossil tree in Appendix A. Though they did not trace the particular find which occasioned the 'Original Lines', they reinforced my suspicion that the verses were too wrong­ headed scientifically to be the work of Gerard Manley: I am here par­ ticularly indebted to John Cooper, Ann Lunn, and Jennifer Fitch. The Geology Library at Queen's gave me a flying start in my investigations-it preserves one of the finest collections of nineteenth-century British geo-

Acknowledgements

lX

logical journals, magazines, and papers in North America. In astronomy my friend Alan Batten, Vice-President of the International Astronomical Union, has cast a professional eye over some of my conjectures in a field which was in younger days my hobby, and brought them up to date. I must also thank David Hanes, a Queen's astronomer, for correcting the calcula­ tions I made from the Nautical Almanac in expounding 'Miror surgentem' (No. 99) from the poet's allusions to Orion and the setting moon. In physics Richard Phillips brought his Cavendish Laboratory knowledge to bear on the diagnosis of the temperamental ailments from which the Infra-red Image Converter in the Bodleian was suffering, and David Hanes helped me on this subject also by clarifying my account of that instrument. For contributions to the solution of other questions I thank Louise Clubb, University of California; Marcia Allentuck with her command of rare information; Fr. Joseph Costelloe, librarian of the Jesuit Curia in Rome and translator of Fr. Schurhammer's monumental volumes on St Francis Xavier; Brian Cullum of Shooter's Hill, London; Katharine Longley of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, England; Fr. Justin McLoughlin, OFM, of the Friary, Stratford, Essex; and Fr. Lawrence Braceland, SJ, of St Paul's College, University of Manitoba. I owe much to the encouragement of Mrs T. S. Eliot, offered in particular during one crisis in the history of this volume. Among editors whom I must thank, John Bell, who had been responsible for the Fourth Edition of the Hopkins Poems , gave me special support during the fashion­ ing of this one. And I shall not forget that it was A. Norman Jeffares who diverted my energies into Hopkins exploration by inviting me to lecture on the poet in Edinburgh to the International Association of Professors of English, and to contribute the Hopkins volume in the Writers and Critics series of which he was General Editor. I have sought to acknowledge the work of other Hopkins scholars in the Introduction, the head-notes and commentaries to individual poems, and the select bibliography of some recent contributions affecting more than a single shorter poem. To anyone inadvertently overlooked in this lively field I tender my apologies. Particular thanks go to David Downes, Fr. Peter Milward, SJ, James Cotter, Alan Heuser, Graham Storey, Hans-Werner Ludwig, Jean-Georges Ritz, Rene Gallet, Gerald Roberts of Beaumont, and Fr. Francis Keegan, SJ, of Mount St Mary's College, Spinkhill. Margaret Patterson courteously sent me a copy of her unpublished 'Hopkins Handbook'. My thanks are also due to lvol Parker, and Ruth Seelhammer of the Hopkins Collection of Gonzaga University. I have valued the scholarship in the Netherlands from the pens of Leo van Noppen and Rudy Bremer. Of constant assistance have been Tom Dunne's almost infallible Comprehensive Bibliography and the Dilligan and Bender

x

Acknowledgements

Concordance to the Fourth Edition. The late Fr. Alfred Thomas, SJ, has placed us all under obligation through his solid factual research and other contributions to Hopkins studies, outlined in my notes to Appendix A. My warmest thanks to any Hopkins scholar, however, must be reserved for Fr. Antony Bischoff, SJ, who has over many years unselfishly shared with me items from his vast accumulation of Hopkins material. It is greatly to be regretted that he has been unable to shape his discoveries into his own portrait of the 'Poet in Black'. For promoting my research with sustained understanding I feel deep gratitude to two successive heads of the Queen's Department of English­ the late George Whalley, an astonishing source of information on many subjects besides Coleridge, and John Stedmond, who showed me unfailing consideration. Among graduate students, a constant stimulus, I should mention David Levy, whose MA thesis probed into Hopkins's references to celestial objects, and who has since found himself a professional niche in astronomy, Donald Reid, Bronwyn Wallace, Sister Miyo Takano (busy translating Hopkins's Further Letters into Japanese), Irene Busterd, Carol Stuart from Cambridge, Sheila Carnall, and Lesley Higgins, so generous in her scholarly response to any help she has received at Campion Hall and Queen's. Michael Moore's contributions to the links between Hopkins and Newman, first worked out in a doctoral thesis which I supervised, are noted under various poems. Without the full co-operation of the owners of the Hopkins MSS this edition would have been impossible. In the Introduction I have listed all holdings outside of Oxford. May I express my gratitude to the rector of Stonyhurst College; the Presidents and Librarians of Holy Cross, Worces­ ter, Mass., Princeton University (Robert H. Taylor Collection), and the Col­ lege of Notre Dame of Maryland; the late Christobel, Lady Pooley, a direct descendant ofthe Hopkins family, for autograph poems she uncovered; Leo Handley-Derry; the archivist of the Jesuit Archives, Dublin; and to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University ofTexas at Austin; as also to the officials of the British Library who rewarded my patience with miniature prints of two Hopkins MSS. My outstanding indebtedness, however, has been to the owners and custodians of the Hopkins autographs now assembled in Oxford Univer­ sity. For the most friendly assistance in the Bodleian Library over the years I am particularly grateful to the late Robert Shackleton, former Librarian, David Vaisey, the present Librarian, and Colin Harris; David Rogers I have already mentioned with gratitude. I have often speculated as to what isolated and corrupt scraps of Hopkins's mature verse would have been left for study if Robert Bridges and his descendants had not assumed the onerous role of its guardians. In

Acknowledgements

xi

the Introduction I have acknowledged the quite exceptional helpfulness of Edward, first Lord Bridges, offered with an enthusiastic promptitude at a time when he carried very onerous official responsibilities. The friendship which he and his son, Thomas, the present baron, extended to me stemmed from their sincere desire to promote the aims of this edition. I am deeply grateful for unstinting aid over the whole course of its preparation and for permission to use material of which the family owns the copyright. I also thank Donald Stanford for permission to quote from a hitherto unpublished letter from Bridges to Hopkins on his triolets (No. 1 50), and other items in his Selected Letters ofRobert Bridges . The Society of Jesus not only holds the copyright to all Hopkins material, but possesses the large assembly of his MSS in Campion Hall. I express my thanks to the Society for generous permission to publish, extended first with warm encouragement by Fr. Ronald Moffat and con­ firmed by Fr. Edward Ennis as Secretary to Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. To facilitate access to the MSS successive Masters of Campion Hall have given me the happy privilege of residence on numerous occasions and for extended periods: Frs. Deryck Hanshell, E. J. Yarnold, Benjamin Winterborn, Paul Edwards, and Peter Hackett. I owe to them and the Fellows my appreciation of their having made me feel no stranger. Those in charge of the Hopkins MSS gave me a sense of a shared purpose, most particularly the late Fr. Basil Fitzgibbon and Fr. Joseph Gill, two fine scholars, and more recently Graham Pugin and Fr. Philip Endean. The edition owes a special debt to Fr. Vincent Bywater's retentive memory. Welcomes have awaited me at St Beuno's and Stonyhurst (where I must mention Fr. David Hoy; also Peter and Brigid Hardwick); at St Francis Xavier's in Liverpool, and from the Irish Fathers in Lower Leeson Street: there Frs. Burke Savage, Fergal McGrath, and Sean 6 Cathain found material I was searching for. At Mount Street the successive archivists of the English (now the British) Province, Frs. Francis Edwards and Geoffrey Holt, help,ed me to solve queries; and I was inspired by that remarkable personality, the late Fr. Martin D'Arcy, whose initiative led to the assembling of the Hopkins MSS in Campion Hall. When I was tempted to abandon ship, my Jesuit friends gently reminded me of their own massive series, Acta Sanctornm , begun over three centuries ago by their Bollandist editors with the volumes on saints celebrated in January, published in 1643, which, after serious set-backs, reached the fringes of December saints only in 1 940. The considerable expense of many return visits to Britain and Ireland, as well as excursions to other research centres, has been sustained by the liberality of the Canada Council, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, augmented by contributions from the Queen's School

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of Graduate Studies and Research, and the Faculty of Arts and Science. The award of a Senior Killam Fellowship gave me welcome relief from most university duties during two years. I trust that my benefactors will feel that this volume, and the other Hopkins publications listed in the Biblio­ graphy, have justified their support. While I was Director of Graduate Studies in English I used to observe with regret the emotional strains imposed on the families of doctoral students during the three or four years devoted to their dissertations. My own family have managed to come to terms with a preoccupation that has become almost a life's work. I am profoundly grateful to them for their positive attitude from start to finish. My wife Rita, though busy with her own art and music, has given me excellent advice and practical aid, besides creating a home atmosphere in which my editing could quietly continue. To our daughter Catherine I express my warm gratitude for her scholarly helpfulness over a long period. She was of particular assistance and en­ couragement to me at a stage when my university responsibilities, extend­ ing even through the summer, made any progress difficult. NORMAN H. MACKENZIE

June 1988

Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

C O NTENTS Plates

xxi

Abbreviations

xxn

Introduction New Features Manuscripts Description of the Manuscripts 'MS H' MS H. i MS H. ii MS A MS B Infra-red Image Converter Texts Additional Versions Other Additions to the Texts Poems with Rearranged Lines Hyphenations and Compounds Punctuation Capitalization The Choice between Different Readings of the MSS The Choice of the Final Manuscript Metrical Marks Counterpoint Other Metrical Marks Chronological Arrangement Variant Readings Head-notes Commentary Conclusion

xxv

xxvi xxvm

XXlX

xxx xxx xxx i i

xxxv

XXXlX

xliii xliii xiv xlvi xlvii xlviii xlix Iii Iii liv Iviii lix lxv lxvii lxx lxxiv

POEMS 1 2

The Escorial Aeschylus: Prometheus Desmotis

5

xiv 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 II

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Contents 11 Mystico A windy day in summer A fragment of anything you like A Vision of the Mermaids Winter with the Gulf Stream (a ) [ Version published in 1 863] (b) [Revision of 1 871] Spring and Death [Fragments 1-c. December 1 863 to April 1 864] Pilate 'She schools the flighty pupils of her eyes' [A soliloquy of one of the spies left in the wilderness] ( a ) The Lover's Stars (b) ' The other leaves the West behind' 'During the eastering of untainted morns' The peacock's eye (two versions) Love preparing to fly Barnfloor and Winepress New Readings (two versions) 'He hath abolish'd the old drouth' ( a ) Rest (b) Heaven-Haven ' I must hunt down the prize' ' Why should their foolish bands, their hopeless hearses' ' Why if it be so, for the dismal morn' ' It was a hard thing to undo this knot' 'Glimmer'd along the square-cut steep' 'Of virtues I most warmly bless' 'Miss Story's character! too much you ask' 'Her prime of life-cut down too soon' 'Did Helen steal my love from me?' [Fragments II-July to September 1 864] [ Fragments of] Floris i n Italy [Epigrams] ( a ) ' You ask why can't Clarissa hold her tongue' ( b) On a dunce who had not a word to say for himself (c) By Mrs. Hopley

6 10 II II

15 16 17 18 19 22 22 24

25 25 26 26 26 27 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 31 32 32

33 33 33 36 43 43 43

Contents (d) Modem Poets (e) By one of the old school who was bid to follow Mr. Browning's flights (j) On a Poetess (g) On one who borrowed his sermons 33 lo 34 The rainbow 35 'No, they are come; their horn is lifted up' 36 'Now I am minded to take pipe in hand' 37 [Star Images: September to December 1 864] 38 A Voice from the World 39 [Fragments III- October 1 864 to April 1 865] 40 'A pure gold lily, but by the pure gold lily' 4 1 'Although she be more white' 4 2 [St. Dorothea] (a) For a Picture of Saint Dorothea (b) 'A basket broad of woven white rods' (c) St. Dorothea (Lines fora picture) (d) Lines for a picture of St. Dorothea-Dorothea and Theophilus 43 'Proved Etherege prudish, selfish, hypocrite, heartless' 44 Richard 45 'All as that moth call'd Underwing, alighted' 46 The Queen's Crowning 47 For Stephen andBarberie 4 8 'Boughs being pruned, birds preened, show more fair' 49 'I hear a noise of waters drawn away' 50 ' When eyes that cast about the heights of heaven' 5 1 The Summer Malison 52 St. Theda 53 Easter Communion 54 'O Death, Death, He is come' 55 'Love me as I love thee. 0 double sweet!' 56 To Oxford (a) 'New-dated from the terms that reappear' (b) ' Thus, I come underneath this chapel-side' (c ) 'As Devonshire letters, earlier in the year' (d) 'Bellisle! that is a fabling name, but we'

xv

44 44 44 44 44 45 45 46 46 48 53 55 55 56 56 57 58 59 6o 62 63 67 68 68 68

� � 70 71 71 71 72 72 72

xvi 57 58

Contents ' Where art thou friend, whom I shall never see' 'Confirmed beauty will not bear a stress'

59 The beginning of the end 60 The Alchemist in the city 61 'Myself unholy, from myself unholy' 62 'See how Spring opens with disabling cold' 63 Continuation of R. Garnett's Nix 64 65 66 67 68

� 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

[Fragments IV-July, August 1 865] 'O what a silence is this wilderness!'

Castara Victrix 'My prayers must meet a brazen heaven' Shakspere ' Trees by their yield' 'Let me be to Thee as the circling bird' The Half-way House A Complaint 'Moonless darkness stands between' ' The earth and heaven, so little known' (a) 'As it fell upon a day' (b) 'In the staring darkness' (c) ' The stars were packed so close that night' The Nightingale (a) The Habit of Perfection ( b) The Kind Betrothal Nondum Easter Summa [Jesu Dulcis Memoria] Inundatio Oxoniana (a ) Ecquis binas (b) 'How well Thou comfortest!' [Latin Elegiacs] (a) ' Tristi tu, memini, virgo cum sorte fuisti' (b) ' Tristis eras dum me venturum, Cythna, putares' (c) 'Quo rubeant dulcesve rosae vel pomifer aestas' (d) 'At tu me madidis noli vexare querellis'

73 73 74 75 76 77 77 78 79 80 83 83 83 84 85 85 86 86 87 87 88 88 89 90 91 93 94 94

96 97 97 97 97 97 97

Contents

85 86 87 88 89 90 9I 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 IOO

IOI !02

I03 I04 I05

I06

!07 I08 I09

(e) 'Alget honos frondum silvis deperditus, alget' (f) 'Non ibi sol nobis versos indulserit aestus' [Elegiacs: after The Convent Threshold] 'Fraterno nobis' 'Not kind! to freeze me with forecast' [Horace: Persicos odi] [Horace: Odi profanum volgus] The Elopement To Jesus Living in Mary ( Oratio Patris Condren ) Ad Matrem Virginem 'Haec te jubent salvere, quod possunt, loca' 'O praedestinata bis' Ad Mariam 0 Deus, ego amo te : 'O God, I love thee, I love thee' Rosa Mystica 'Quique haec membra malis vis esse obnoxia multis' (a) On St. Winefred ( b) In S. Winefridam (c) ' lam si rite sequor prisci vestigia facti' 'Miror surgentem per puram Oriona noctem' S. Thomae Aquinatis Rhythmus (a) 'Godhead, I adore Thee down on bended knee' (b) 'Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore' (c) 'Godhead, I adore Thee, fast in hiding; Thou' (d) ' I bow down before thee, Godhead hiding here' The Wreck of the Deutschland (a) The Silver Jubilee ( b) Ad Episcopum Sa/opiensem (c) Cywydd Moonrise June I 9 I 876 The Woodlark Penmaen Pool (a) For the Inn Album at Penmaen Pool (b) Penmaen Pool: For the Visitors' Book at the Inn In Thee/am Virginem Ochenaid Sant Francis Xavier [Margaret Clitheroe] 'Hope holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out'

xvii 98 98 98 99 IOO IOO IOI !03 I03 !04 !04 !05 I 06 I07 I08 I09 I09 I 09 1 10 III 1 12 1 13 1 13 1 18 I28 I29 I 30 I3 I I3 I I 33 134 I 35 I36 I 36 I 38

XVlll

I IO III Il2 Il3 Il4 I I5 I I6 I I7 n8 I I9 120 121 122 I23 I24 I 25 1 26 I 27 1 28

I29 130 I3 1 I32 I33 I34 I 35 I 36 I37 I38 I39 I 40

Contents 'Murphy gives sermons so fierce and hell-fiery' God's Grandeur The Starlight Night The Lantern out of doors ' The dark-out Lucifer detesting this' 'As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame' Ad Reverendum Patrem Fratrem Thomam Burke Spring The Sea and the Skylark In the Valley of the Elwy The Windhover Pied Beauty The Caged Skylark (a) 'Matchless mercy in disast(e)rous, a disastrous time' (b) ' To him who ever thought with love of me' Hurrahing in Harvest The Loss of the Eurydice The May Magnificat ' The furl of fresh-leaved dogrose' (a) 'Denis, I Whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit' (b) 'He might be slow and something feckless first' (c ) 'O where is it, the wilderness' (d) ' What being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been' Duns Scotus's Oxford Binsey Poplars Henry Purcell 'Repeat that, repeat' The Candle Indoors The Handsome Heart (two versions) ' Who shaped these walls has shewn': formerly called ['On a Piece of Music'] Cheery Beggar The Bugler's First Communion Andromeda Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice Peace

139 I39 I39 I 40 I 40 I4 I I41 1 42 I43 143 1 44 1 44 1 48 1 48 1 48 148 149 1 53 1 54 1 55 1 55 1 55 I 55 1 56 1 56 I 57 I 58 1 58 I 58 1 59 161 161 1 63 I 63 I64

Contents 14 1 1 42 1 43 1 44 1 45 1 46 1 47 1 48 1 49 1 50

151 1 52 1 53 1 54 1 55 1 56 1 57 1 58 1 59 1 60 161 162 163 1 64 1 65 1 66 1 67 168 1 69 1 70 1 71 172

At the Wedding March Felix Randal Brothers Spring and Fall Milton lnversnaid Ange/us ad Virginem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo Ribblesdale A Trio of Triolets (a) Afyna{ n Katv6v; (b) Cockle's Antibilious Pills (c ) ' The Child is Father to the Man' The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe ' The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less' St. Winefred's Well ' To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life' ' I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day' 'Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail' 'No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief' To what serves Mortal Beauty? 'Not, I 'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee' ' Yes. Why do we all, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless' ' Thee, God, I come from, to thee go' 'Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray' 'My own heart let me more have pity on' To his Watch [Songs from Shakespeare, in Latin and Greek] Robert Bridges: ' In all things beautiful, I cannot see' [Incomplete Latin version] Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People Harry Ploughman [Ashboughs] : 'Not of all my eyes see, wandering on the world' Tom's Garland Epithalamion

xix

164 16 5 165 1 66 167 167 168 169 171 1 72 172 1 72 1 73 1 76 176 181 181 182 182 1 82 1 83 1 84 184 1 85 1 86 1 86 1 87 1 90 1 90 19 1 1 93 1 94 1 95 1 95

xx

1 73 174 175 176

Contents ' The sea took pity: it interposed with doom' That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire ' What shall I do for the land that bred me' St. Alphonsus Rodriguez (a) Honour should flower from exploit, so we say (b) Glory i s a Glory should flame off exploit, so we say (c) Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say ' Thou art indeed just, Lord, if l contend' ' The shepherd's brow, fronting forked lightning, owns' To R. B.

{

1 77 1 78 179

197 197 198 199 200 200 20 1 20 1 20 4

Appendix A: Original Lines on a Fossil Tree in a Garden at Highgate

205

Appendix B: The Convent Threshold (by Christina Rossetti)

207

Appendix C: Latin Versions of Nursery Rhymes ascribed to Hopkins

21 1

Commentary Note on Missing Poems Note on Hopkins as a Novice Sonnets of Desolation or The Dark Sonnets Select Bibliography Index of Short Titles and First Lines

2 1 3-5 1 3 282 30 1 44 3 5 1 4-3 1 533

PLAT E S

1. ' The Windhover': MS A1 (A, pp. 94 , 95 )

page 1 45

Bridges Loan Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford 2. ' The Windhover': MS A2 (A, p. 96) Bridges Loan Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford 3. ' The Windhover': MS B (B. 1ov ) Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Eng. Poet. d. 149)

1 47

4 . ' Thou art indeed just, Lord, if l contend': MS H (H. ii. 1 1ov )

202

Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Eng. Poet. d. 1 50)

5 . ' Thou art indeed just, Lord, if l contend': MS H (H. ii. 1 11r,v ) Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Eng. Poet. d. 150)

203

ABB REVIATI ONS 1. Published Works by Gerard Manley Hopkins ].

L. i L. ii

L. iii

N.

Poems

s.

The Journals an d Papers of Gera rd Manley Hopkins , ed. Humphry House, completed Graham Storey (London, Oxford University Press, 1959). The Letters of GerardManley Hopkins to R obertB ridges , ed. C. C. Abbott (London, Oxford University Press, 1935; 2nd imp. rev., 1955). The Corresp on den ce ofGera rdManley Hop kins an d R icha rd Watson D ixon , ed. C. C. Abbott (London, Oxford University Press, 1 935; 2nd imp. rev., 1955). FurtherLetters ofGera rdManley Hop kins In cluding h is Corresp onden ce w ith Coventry Patm ore, ed. C. C. Abbott (London, Oxford University Press, 2nd edn., rev. and enlarged, 1956). Note: the pagination of the 1 st edn., 1938, is entirely different from p. 5 onwards. The Note-books an d Papers of Gera rd Manley Hop kins , ed. Humphry House (London, Oxford University Press, 1 937). Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins , 1 st edn., ed. Robert Bridges (London, Humphrey Milford, 1 9 1 8); 2nd edn., ed. Robert Bridges and Charles Williams (London, Oxford University Press, 1930); 3rd edn., ed. W. H. Gardner (London, Oxford University Press, 1948); 4th edn., ed. W. H. Gardner and Norman H. MacKenzie (London, Oxford University Press, 1 967; rev. 1970; 8th imp. rev. 1984). The Serm ons an d Devotional Writings of Gera rd Manley Hop kins , ed. Christopher Devlin, SJ (London, Oxford University Press, 1959).

2. Manuscripts ofPoems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (main volumes only)

A

B c. i, c. ii

H. i H. ii

MS A-album of autograph poems sent by Hopkins to Bridges, with transcriptions of others made by Bridges. Bridges Loan Collection, Bodleian Library. See Introduction, pp. xxxi i ff. MS B -album of transcripts made by Bridges and 'corrected' by Hopkins, along with autographs added by Hopkins. Bodleian Library-MS Eng. Poet. d. 149. See Introd., pp. xxxv ff. Two tiny notebooks, mostly in pencil, containing memoranda and poems written during Hopkins's Oxford undergraduate years, Sept. 1 863 to Jan. 1 866, published in Journals an d Note-books; facsimiles in Fa csim iles , i. Originals in Campion Hall. See Introd., p. xxvii. MS H. i-a modern album of Hopkins autographs, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. c. 48. See Introd., p. xxx . Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. d. 150. See Introd., pp. xxx ff.

Abbreviations Facsimiles, i

Facsimiles, ii

AMOG AV CGH CH CP cw del. DNB EDD GMH HH HQ HRB LOS NHM OED orig. Pat. Graec. Pat. Lat. PL prob. RB

rev. RK RV WHG

xxiii

Th e Ea rly Poetic Man uscripts an d Note-books of Gera rd Man ley Hop kins in Fa csimile, ed. w ith Ann otations , Trans criptions of Unp ublish ed Passages an d an Introduction by Norman H. MacKenzie (New York, Garland Publishing, 1989). Th e Later Poetic Man uscripts of Gera rd Man ley Hopkins in Fa csimile, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (New York, Garland Publishing, in pre­ paration). (Lat.) Ad Majorem Oei Gloriam ( To the greater glory of God-a Jesuit dedication). See also LOS. Authorized Version of the Bible, King James translation of 161 1 '(Anglican). Colin G. Hardie, former Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford (Classics). Campion Hall, Oxford. Catherine Phillips, ed. of Hop kins , Oxford Authors, 1986. Charles Williams, co-editor of Poems , 2nd edn., 1930. deleted-see Introd., p. !xvi. Dictionary ofNationa l Biography . English Dia lect Dictionary , ed. Joseph Wright, 6 vols. (London, Oxford University Press, 1 896- 1 905). Gerard Manley Hopkins. Humphry House (ed. of]. and N.). Hop kins Quarterly, ed. Richard F. Giles. Hop kins R es earch B ulletin , ed. Revd Alfred Thomas, SJ. (Lat.) Laus Oeo Semper (Praise be to God always-see AMOG). Norman H. MacKenzie. OxfordEnglish Dictionary, 12 vols. and Supp l., with 4 vols. Supp lement, 1972-86. originally (the earliest reading). See Introd., p. !xvi. Patrologia Graeca , ed. ]. P. Migne ( 162 vols., Paris, 1 857-66). Patrologia Latina , ed. ]. P. Migne (22 1 vols., Paris, 1 844-64). (Milton) Pa radise L ost . probably. Robert Bridges. revised (as). Ross Kilpatrick (Professor of Classics, Queen's University). Revised Version of the Bible, 1 880-4. William H. Gardner.

I NTRODUCTI ON New Features This, the Oxford English Texts edition of Hopkins's Poetical Works, is distinguished from the first four Oxford editions of his poems (including the one which I edited in collaboration with the late W. H. Gardner), in a number of particulars. Each is listed briefly here and developed at length in the ensuing pages. The history of all the manuscript albums of Hopkins's verse is provided in new detail. The poems, whether finished or un­ finished, originals or translations, are arranged in a single sequence based on their date of composition, a principle used also in Dr Catherine Phillips's Oxford Authors Hopkins (October 1986). Her invaluable research into the evolution of Hopkins's handwriting, as an indication of when a poem was drafted or copied out, is gratefully acknowledged below (pp. lxii f.). To refine the text, differentiating changes made by Bridges from revisions by Hopkins himself, I experimented with certain forensic­ document techniques, a pioneering venture as a direct result of which Infra-red Image Converters have been installed in two great British libraries for the assistance of future editors. Whereas the author's metrical marks were sparingly utilized in this volume's predecessors, here I have tried to ensure that all those applicable to the final text have been recorded in the notes or in the text, though sometimes in standard rather than esoteric form. With some celebrated poems, such as ' The Habit of Perfec­ tion', where, e.g., the version selected by previous editors was not the latest revision, the old familiar text has been printed along with the final one. The Fourth edition, as corrected in the reprint of 1970, revised the Third edition of the Poems in hundreds of places. But my minute scrutiny of the MSS from 1970 on uncovered many other departures from the final auto­ graphs. Naturally I wished to save these for my OET volume, but as one set-back after another postponed publication, I released the most vital changes in subsequent reprints of the Gardner and MacKenzie edition. The largest batch was inserted, years after Gardner's death, in the 1984 impression, which brought the circulation above the 5 0,000 mark. Those changes which required extensive resetting I postponed, along with others (too numerous to tabulate) where the sense seemed virtually unaffected by the deviations or the autograph was ambiguous. The submission of this OET edition to the Press preceded the publication of Catherine Phillips's Oxford Authors, so that work is normally excluded in my references to earlier readings; however, I have taken advantage of the copy-editing stage

xxvi

Introduction

to adopt some of her readings, and also to quote a few examples of her illuminating comments. For the first time all the (often bewildering) drafts and fair copies of each piece have been listed in the head-note in their probable sequence, each characterized by folio reference, layout, features which differentiate it from the rest, and indications as to when it was copied out. In addition to some scattered pieces and uncollected lines not previously incorporated, thousands of textual variants are quoted in the notes. Attention has been drawn to a wealth of Hopkins criticism, from all schools of thought, par­ ticularly articles and books that have appeared since the 196, A , and " as alternative sforzando signs. So too with 'child' in I. 16. Two words awarded pause marks in A and B were originally allocated double stresses in D. In I. 8 D's double stress in 'Soared 6r sank-' is transferred in B to 'or', leaving 'Soared' unstressed. Hopkins's sensitivity even to a sforzando varied so much that two syllables so marked in A do not even rate a simple stress in B. In this edition the text is from B, but the indenting and metrical marks have been governed by D. Musicians may well be puzzled by Hopkins's apparent confusion of time (shown by a pause, "") with stress (shown by a sforzando, A ) . The poet, of course, recognized the difference between classical quantitative verse which depended on length and Modern English verse which was accentual (J. 270- 1). Yet in apparently accepting Patmore's theory that in English poetry the feet are roughly equal in length, he sometimes wrote as though time could somehow compensate for lack of 'strength', 'weight', 'stress', and vice-versa (L. i. 8 1-2, 1 57). This may account for some of the inter­ changeability of the metrical marks in the 'Harry Ploughman' MSS. The third new sign introduced by B is a distinction between 'the real or heard stress' and the 'dumb or conventional one' (L. i. 1 09), here unsatis­ factorily (and surely unnecessarily in Sprung Rhythm) represented by tiny circles drawn with a clumsy pen below syllables. The real stress is shown by a black ball, and the nominal one by a white ball, but they can scarcely be told apart when a pen carries too much ink. Where sforzando or pause marks appear in other poems I have, for greater intelligibility, generally substituted the commoner double-stress marks. For scholars who require greater exactitude in their exploration of the precision (or lack of it) with which Hopkins used various stress signs, the head-notes and commentary provide more details, and my Facsimiles volumes group all the MSS of each poem together in convenient form, so that Hopkins's vacil­ lations in metrical marks may be studied in greater depth. Sister Marcella Holloway's fine pioneering study, The Prosodic Theory of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1947), predated our Fourth Edition of the Poems and showed no awareness of discrepancies between signs in various MSS.

Chronological Arrangement With the common-sense exceptions noted below, the poems are placed in the approximate sequence of their composition. Of the factors within my own control which have delayed the publication of this edition, the most voracious of time have been efforts not only to date each poem but to deter­ mine the order of each of its drafts and revisions.

lx

Introduction

Some pieces seemed to spring from seed to maturity in a day, making appropriate the 'exact' dates given them by their author. But others straggled over many months-in one instance nine years-like a ground­ creeper putting down new roots at stray intervals. Still others, which had wilted in their original metre, found fresh vitality when cross-fertilized later with Alexandrines or the dramatic form. For such pieces I have had to use my best judgement in placing them in the chronological series. The St Dorothea poems are a good example. In the Fourth Edition of the Poems the three different versions and the beginning of another were dispersed as though they were separate poems (pp. 19, 35, 137 and 3 44). Though I was myself largely responsible for this decision, I regretted it when I tried to compare them in depth for a conference paper. Readers will, I am sure, appreciate having them brought together in this edition as No. 42 (a) to (d): the notes provide estimates of when each MS was written. For those to whom the day-to-day progress of a composition, even though in bewilderi n g disarray, is of major interest, my reproductions in facsimile from his tiny Oxford notebooks, C. i and C. ii (New York: Garland Publishing, 1 989) will have shown the impossibility of agreeing upon an 'exact' date. However, my cross-references to this volume (referred to as 'Facsimiles , i') will enable readers to find the separate tesserae of these poems in the sites where they lie. Humphry House, with the artistic skill of a museum curator, assembled many of them into an examin­ able artifact, and I provide grateful references to his editions of the Note­ books and Journals , though I have not always introduced them into the chronology at the point chosen by House. Students of the printed Journals (ed. by Humphry House and Graham Storey) can find, tossed down between ephemeral prose memoranda and self-contained poems, brief verse jottings, only a line or two each, entrapping some volatile metaphor. In this edition it was less disruptive and more economical of space to group these at intervals-e.g., No. 9, ' [Fragments I, c. December 1 863 to April 1 864]'-leaving the head-note to reveal exactly where each can be located in time and place (see Nos. 9, 30, 37, 39, 64). The chronology of each period in Hopkins's creativity may call for special investigative techniques. Take one of the most attractive segments, the nine sonnets dated 1 877, that wonder-year spent in pastoral Wales. For five of them, including ' The Windhover', Hopkins furnished not only the month but the day (Nos. 1 1 1 , 1 1 2, 1 19, 1 20, 1 24), while a sixth (No. 1 1 8) can be fixed within six days. For 'Spring' (No. 1 1 7) we have merely the month ('May 1 877'), but since spring is popularly regarded as ending about mid­ May, gliding into the English summer, it must surely have been written very early that month (cf. L. iii. 132: the reference in it to 'Mayday' might

Introduction

lxi

even tempt us to assign it to 1 May). Dr Mariani ( Commentary , 84-5), sought to fit the remaining two sonnets (Nos. 1 13, 1 22) into the ascending order of metrical complexity which he discerned throughout 1 877. The concept is helpful, though hard to measure objectively when we do not know how some of the lines were meant to be read: we can be guided to some extent by counterpoint signs and by the great colons which indicate Sprung Rhythm effects. A further criterion dawned on me as I checked the Fourth Edition page proofs against the autographs: I suddenly noticed an evolution in the layout of his sonnets, their patterns of indentation and line-spacing (see my 1 974 lecture, 'Hopkins, Robert Bridges and the Modem Editor', 27-30). From 'God's Grandeur' (No. 1 1 1) on, through the spring and summer, the earliest fair copy of each sonnet indented the lines with b and d rhymes (No. 1 13 only imperfectly). This practice he dropped, never to resume, with 'Hurrahing in Harvest' (No. 1 24, 1 Sept. 1 877). The subdividing of the sonnet is another progressive feature. At first the sonnets had a line-space between octave and sestet only (Nos. 1 1 1 , 1 12). The four sonnets dated May 1 877 exhibit a second break, between their tercets. ' The Caged Skylark', sent to Bridges before 24 July, introduces a third line-space, between the quatrains, a tendency towards which had begun to show itself in the MSS of a number of earlier sonnets by a spacing between ll. 4 and 5 very slightly wider than normal (too small to be profitably imitated typographically). Thereafter all the sonnets of 1 877-82 maintain these divisions into two quatrains followed by two tercets. The anomaly of No. 1 24, with no gap between ll. 1 1 and 1 2, is explained by his having had to squeeze in the last lines to fit his paper, with smaller and smaller writing. Later Hopkins left no line-spaces at all, but used braces in the left margin to identify the structural units. Applied to ' The Lantern' ('St. Beuno's 1 877') the pattern allows us to place it between ' The Starlight Night' (24 Feb.) and ' The Caged Skylark' (before 2 5 July). The cavernous darkness implied in ' The Lantern' eliminates the twilit weeks around midsummer which never go black (see No. 1 03): and because the theologians had to retire at 10.30 p.m., February to April is more likely than May. Hopkins's absent-mindedness, however, and his lapses of memory in unimportant minutiae caution us not to depend upon indenting and line-spacing as an infallible guide. Attention to layout also assists in dating revised autographs of sonnets, to which Hopkins habitually gave the date of first composition. MS H2 of ' The Starlight Night' (No. 1 1 2), e.g., though dated 24 Feb. 1 877, has no indentation; it therefore seems to have been copied later than ' The Caged Skylark' (No. 1 22, summer 1 877), the last sonnet which indented b and d rhymes, but before copies of sonnets inscribed by Hopkins in album B in 1 884 . The particular shape of the counterpoint signs, here formed like turns

lxii

Introduction

in music, is not encountered prior to 1 879, further narrowing this seven­ year gap. In printing each poem I have tried to reproduce the layout which prevailed when the poem was first composed, not that shown in later revi­ sions or in the manuscript chosen as Text. Bridges, faced with so many variations in pattern, followed his own artistic layout when transcribing sonnets into MS B. Though I specify the layout of some autographs in the head-notes, I ignore that of transcriptions since they carry no significance. The changes in the poet's practice need to be studied visually through the plates in the Facsimiles volumes. When I drew up an elaborate chart indicating in diagrammatic form and chronological sequence the layout of each sonnet in its earliest fair copy, one gross anomaly appeared: 'As kingfishers catch fire'. Judging it from its ideas, scholars had associated this celebrated sonnet with Hopkins's tertianship (October 1881 to August 1 882), when he was immersed in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius: see, e.g., Dr Jean-Georges Ritz's useful 'Liste chronologique des poemes' (Le Poete Girard Manley Hopkins , Paris 1963, Appendice iii, 670). The sole manuscript is a draft, a mixture of pencil and overlying ink, a confusing document from which to determine layout; but the original pencil sestet shows a line-space between the tercets (making it later than ' The Starlight Night', No. 1 1 2); but in the octave there is no clear gap between the quatrains (fixing it as earlier than ' The Caged Skylark', No. 1 22). It would appear to predate Hopkins's visit to London on 25 July 1 877. Its indenting suggested that it was earlier than No. 1 24 . This conclusion was so contrary to current dating that in order to check its validity I was driven to a more intense study of Hopkins's evolving handwriting. A singularly disheartening pursuit this proved, baffling in its complexity, owing to sudden variations and periods when Hopkins reverted to former patterns. But I felt convinced that if only a sufficient number of the features which occurred simultaneously in a particular undated manuscript could be taken into account and examined against carefully classified examples the dates of which were known, it would no longer be necessary to rely upon general impressions as to when a docu­ ment had been written. I was heavily occupied with university teaching, the supervision of doctoral theses, and, as Director of Graduate Studies in English for many years, with administration which rather thickened than subsided during the summer. My wife, Rita, volunteered her assistance, but her spare time too was largely engrossed by her twin professions of musician and artist: after many months she could report only limited progress. It was Catherine Phillips who, at my request, gradually built up records and expertise over a period of some six years. She used Hopkins's dated poems, correspond­ ence, and journals to accumulate and file accurate tracings of words illus-

Introduction

lxiii

trating the varying shapes of every upper and lower case letter, tens of thousands of them, each with its manuscript reference and date. For a small 'f', for example, we assembled some 700 examples, most of them collected by Catherine. With each poem I went over her findings, nearly always with admiring agreement, and we checked them against any biographical facts which might confirm or modify the conclusion. Every clue in the poem or in the paper on which it was written has to be taken into account. Thus with ' Inundatio Oxoniana' (No. 82), Will Gardner (Poems , 3rd edn., p. 263) ' This very very day came down to us after a boon he on My late being there begged of m€,Overflowing Boon in my bestowing, Came, I say, this day to it -to a First Communion. '-.__/ Here he knelt then in regimental red. Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain lo f feet To his youngster take his treat! Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead. ----There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine, By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling, dauntless; Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless; Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine . ..._;;/

5

IO

15

Poem 137 Frowning and forefending angel-warder Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him; March, kind comrade, abreast him; Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order. ------

20

How it does my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill, When limber liquid youth, that toall I teach Yields tender as a pushed peach, Hies headstrong to,-.its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!

�

�

Then though I should tread ttifts of consolation

25

Days after, so I in a sort deserve to And do serve God to serve to Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration . .._____...,

Nothing else is like it, no, not all so strains Us-freshyouth fretted in a bloomfall all portending That sweet's sweeter ending; Realm both Christ is heir to and there reigns . .._____..., 0 now well work that sealing sacred ointment! 0 for now charms, arms, what bans off bad And locks love ever in a lad! Let me though see no more of him , and not disappointment -----Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift, In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing That brow and bead of being, An our day's God's own Gal �. Though this child's drift

30

35

4o

Seems by a divine doom channelled, nor d � cry Disaster there; but m aybe not rankle and roam In backwheels, though bound home?­ That left to the Lord of the Eucharist , I here lie by; ------Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did Prayer go disregarded: Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven heard � these.

45

Poem 138

138

163

Andromeda Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude, With not her either beauty's equal or Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes; but now hears roar A wilder beast from West than all were, more Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd . . Her Perseus linger and leave her to her extremes?Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,

IC

All while her patience, morselled into pangs, Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams, With Gorgon's gear and barebill I thongs and fangs.

1 39

Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice The dappled die-away Cheek and the wimpled lip, The gold-wisp, theairy-grey Eye, all in fellowshipThis, all this beauty blooming, This, all this freshness fuming, Give God while worth consuming. Both thought and thew now bolder And told by Nature: Tower; Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder That beat and breathe in powerThis pride of prime's enjoyment Take as for tool, not toy meant And hold at Christ's employment. The vault and scope and schooling And mastery in the mind, In silk-ash kept from cooling And ripest under rind-

5

10

15

Poem 139 What death half lifts the latch of, What hell hopes soon the snatch of, Your offering, with despatch, of!

140

20

Peace When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?-I 'll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it? 0 surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite, That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.

10

At the Wedding March God with honour hang your head, Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed With lissome scions, sweet scions, Out of hallowed bodies bred. Each be other's comfort kind: Deep, deeper than divined, Divine charity, dear charity, Fast you ever, fast bind. Then let the March tread our ears:

i to him tUm with tears

Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock, Deals triumph and immortal years.

10

Poem 142

Felix Randal Felix Randal the farrier , 0 is he dead then ? my dutya ll ended, ..._., ....___,, .._____., Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy­ handsome Pining, pining in it ---" and some ..___.. , till time when reason rambled '--Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended? Sickness broke '--him ---" . Impatient ...____., , he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some

s

Months ear!!9" since Chad our sweet reprieve and ransom ' Tendered to him-- . Ah well ...____., , God rest him all road ever he ---offended! This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Fe� , poor Felix Randal;

10

How far from then forethought �. all thy more boisterous years, When thouat the random .._____., grim f6rge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey dray� his bright and battering sandal!

1 43

Brothers How lovely theelder brother's Life all laced in theother's, Love-laced!-what once I well Witnessed; so fortune fell. When Shrovetide, two years gone, Our boys' plays brought on Part was picked for John, YoungJohn; then fear, then joy Ran revel in the elder boy.

5

166

Poem 143 Now the night come, all Our company thronged the hall. Henry by the wall Beckoned me beside him. I came where called and eyed him By meanwhiles; making my play Tum most on tender byplay. For, wrung all on love's rack, My lad, and lost in Jack, Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip, Or drove, with a diver's dip, Clutched hands through clasped knees; And many a mark like these Told tales with what heart's stress He hung on thilmp's success. Now the'"'6 ther was brass-b61d: He had no work to hold His heart up at the strain; Nay, roguish ran the vein. Two tedious acts were past; Jack's call and cue at last; When Henry, heart-forsook, Dropped eyes and dared not look. There! the hall rung; Dog, he did give tongue! But Harry-in his hands he has flung His tear-tricked cheeks of flame For fond love and for shame.Ah Nature, framed in fault, There's comfort then, there's salt! Nature, bad, base, and blind, Dearly thou canst be kind; There dearly then, dearly, Dearly thou canst be kind.

144

Spring and Fall: to a Young Child Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving?

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Spring and Fall Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

1 45

167

JO

15

Milton (translated from Dryden) .tEvo diversi tres et regione poetae Hellados, Ausoniae sunt Britonumque decus. Ardor in hoe animi, majestas praestat in illo, Tertius ingenio junxit utrumque suo. Scilicet inventrix cedens Natura labori 'Quidquid erant isti' dixerat 'unus eris'.

1 46

5

Inversnaid Sept. 28 1 881 This darksome bum, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A wind puff-bonnet of fawn-froth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

5

10

168

Poem 146 Wiry heath packs, flitches of fem, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, 0 let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

1 47

15

Ange/us ad Virginem Gabriel, from heaven's king Sent to the maiden sweet, Brought to her blissfill tiding And fair 'gan her to greet. 'Hail be thou, full of grace aright! For so God's Son, the heaven's light, Loves man, that He I a man will be I and take Flesh 6f thee, maiden bright, Mankind free for to make Of sin and devil's might.' Gently t6 him gave answer The gentle maiden then: 'And in what wise should I bear Child, that know not man?' The angel said: 'O dread thee nought. 'Tis through the Holy Ghost that wrought Shall be this thing I whereof tiding I I bring: Lost mankind shall be bought By thy sweet childbearing, And back from sorrow brought.' When the maiden understood And the angel's words had heard, Mildly, of her own mild mood, The angel she answered: 'Our Lord His handmaiden, I wis, I am, that here above us is: As touching me I fulfilled be I thy saw; That I, since His will is, Be, out of nature's law A maid with mother's bliss.'

5 7 -9 IO

15

1 9-21

25

30 3 1 -3 35

Ange/us ad Virginem The angel went away thereon And parted from her sight And straightway she conceived a Son Through th' Holy Ghost His might. In her was Christ contained anon, True God, true man, in flesh and bone; Born Of her too I when time was due; I who then Redeemed us for His own, And bought us out of pain, And died for us t'atone. Filled full of charity, Thou matchless maiden-mother, Pray for us to him that He For thy love above other, Away our sin and guilt should take, And clean of every stain us make And heaven's bliss, I when our time is I to die, Would give us for thy sake; With grace to serve him by Till He us to him take. Amen.

1 48

16 reply. I What the [A 1 heart de/. ] soul is! which, like carriers 14 H Run all your race and brace s�r that strain! A 1 Run all your race, 0 brace [then as H] . Variants i n Alexandrine version ( b) . Original readings i n B 2 include : 1 choice; what will you 4 That ever he swung to, put what 8 Falls light as ten years have me buy long taught the what and why. [rev. ] Falls light as if for a lifelong schooled to what and 1 1 And surely it is in this case, why. 9 Mannerly the heart is more than bathed 13, 14 None but this, that all your after race I Match and more The incident behind the poem is told in L. i. 86: 'last Lent, when Fr. Parkinson was laid up in the country, two boys of our congregation gave me much help in the sacristy in Holy Week [from 6 Apr.] . I offered th em money for their services, which the elder refused, but being pressed consented to take it laid out in a book. The younger followed suit; then when some days after I asked him what I shd. buy answered as in the sonnet. . . . I find within my professional experience now a good deal of matter to write on.' See also L. ii. 27; A. Bischoff, StA/oysius , 8- 12. 1-4. Poems , edns. 1 to 4, took II. 1 -4 from A1. 3-5.

air ply: The image is from the magnetic needle (cf. S. 137 ff., 1 57-8). With the play on plied and reply (both from Lat. plicare , to bend) cf. L. i. 92, ' The little hero of the Handsome Heart has gone to school at Boulogne to be bred for a priest and he is bent on being a Jesuit' (my ital.). 5.

• • •

heart: on heart/soul see Variants and S. 1 03.

5, 6. Carrier doves or pigeons used to be kept in darkness for 6-8 hrs. before release; I. 6 is parenthetic, alluding to Rom. 13: 12 ('cast off the works of darkness'), Col. 3: 9. nature knows: orig. (H) 'nature'H dare'. See S. 146-59 for the affective will being attracted towards the true good once it has clothed 'its old self with grace.

7. wild and self-instressed (marked 'instressed' No. I O I , st. 5, I. 7): expressing its own nature; cf. Nos. 1 22, I. 1 1 ; 1 5 1 , II. 1, 38, 1 24; No. 1 53 ( C), I. 1 5 . On 'instress' see L. Cochran, HQ 6. 4, Winter 1 98o, 143-81 . 7 , 8 . Orig. (H) ' To its function fine falls wild and self-instressed, I As lightly as ten years long taught how to and why.' 8. Falls light: paradoxically falling upwards, as in No. 42 (c), I. 30: once the down­ dragging effects of the Fall are reversed, the heart instinctively soars towards God (No. I O I , st. 3). Cf. Tennyson, In Mem. xxv. 6, 'light as carrier-birds in air'. 9. Orig. (H) 'O handsomer mannerly heart than handsome face', rev. as 'A mannerly

heart!

h�mer than handsome face'.

9-1 1. Mannerly: adj . seemly; moral.

handsome face: cf. L. i. 95, 'beauty of the

Commentary on Poems 134-I35 body . . . is dangerous. Then comes the beauty of the mind, such as genius . . . . And more beautiful . . . is beauty of character, the "handsome heart".' 1 1 . Orig. (H) 'Bathed, in this c;ase, in holy hallowing grace . . . . '

12. buy: cf. No. 1 1 2, I. 9. 13, 14. your race: H, A1, 'all your race' (all ital. in H); cf. No. 137, II. 4o ff.; S. 25 1 . The rev. (A2-text o f a ) contrasts 'pace' (here meaning 'walk steadily') with 'Run'. brace: cf. S. 234, 'earnestness . . . braces, binds us fast into God's service'. (b ). sweet forestalling strain: cf. S. 155, 'this . . . aspiration or stirring of the spirit towards God, is a forestall of the thing to be done'; also S. 1 57, 'God's forestalling of man's action by prevenient grace . . . by its continued strain'.

135 'Who shaped these walls has shewn' [ Formerly called 'On a Piece of Music' ]

MS. H. ii. 99V, 1 00•,v-autograph draft, no title or date, some lines del., and alternatives to half the rest; sts., often followed by dividing lines, are not arranged in final sequence. 1 oov has II. 5-8 written above a letter from W. H. Pater: 'My dear Hopkins, It will give me great pleasure to accept your kind invitation to dinner on Thursday at 5.30', dated 'May 20' ( 1 879) from Bradmore Road (Oxford), his residence 1 869-85 (see L. Evans, Letters of Walter Pater, OVP, 1 970, 6, 36). 99' has del. prose transl. of Latin prayer 'En ego'. See Facsimiles , ii, plates 352-3. Pater's letter gives the earliest possible date. The poem seems the one referred to 22 June 1 879, 'I am . . . writing a piece in the metre of your no. 2 [' Will Love again awake, I That lay asleep so long?'-L. i. 67] , quatrains of sixes' (L. i. 84). RB indexed it in MS H. ii. 1 26' as 'stanzas of unfinished poem on a work of art', but in Poems , 1 st edn., finding no satisfactory arrangement, he printed only one line ('How all's to one thing wrought!') under a small-print heading later mistaken for the title, 'On a piece of music', with a facsimile (following p. 92) of 99v, 1 00'. In Poems , 2nd edn., Charles Williams attempted a version, but a much better one is by Geoffrey Bliss, SJ (Month , 1 67, Feb. 1 936, 1 6o ff.). WHG compromised in 3rd edn. The present version, not claimed as defin­ itive, assumes (with Bliss and Ma,riani, Comment. 159) that the subject was a building (unidentified, but probably med. Gothic-not, I think, Balliol), likened to an inspired melody (cf. S. 200), and that GMH followed RB's model in ' Will Love again awake' (L. i. 67, 72, 84; printed Poetical Works , OUP, 1 953, 242-3) in recurring to the opening lines at the end. The text prints the latest alternatives, though some earlier ones, quoted below, are more attractive or explicit. See ]. 75, L. i. 249 for architecture and music being the two arts founded on propor­ tion, a scientific basis which 'need not interfere with genius'. Cf. Ruskin, Mod. Paint. , on Apparent Proportion as the root of'most of our impressions of the beautiful. There is no sense of rightness or wrongness connected with it . . . . It is utterly vain to endeavour to reduce this proportion to finite rules' ( Works , iv. 1 02-3); S. 1 66, on acts neither good nor bad; Edmund Gurney, 'Relations of Reason to Beauty' (Mind, 4, 1 879, 482-500) for an attack on Helmholtz's claim that 'Beauty is subject to laws and rules'. Contrast GMH's stern views of the moral imperative in non-artistic matters (see NHM, HQ 2. 3, Oct. 1 975, 1 0 1 - 1 6). Pater, whom GMH saw often in Oxford (L. iii. 1 5 1 , 246), may have stimulated the poem: he had suggested that 'all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music' (Fortn. Rev. NS 22, 1 Oct. 1 877, 528, 'School of Giorgione').

410

Commentary on Poems 135-I36

1-4. Cf. L. i. 88, awareness o f a designer heightens our appreciation o f a n old building. 3. I.e., though through thick stone; orig. 'Made known in earth and stone'. The image of music continues in II. 7, 1 1 , 1 4, 22, 26, 38. 5-8. On the unity of the work of art. 7, 8. Orig. 'But the measures of his thought I Were much more exquisite' or ' Then ah! the tune that thought I Trod to that fancied it'; ' The motions of his thought I were much more exquisite.' 9-16. Ruskin ( Works , vi. 333) and Gurney stressed that VlJ.riations in art works (e.g., in med. cathedrals) sprang not from external rules but from the personality of the artist: cf. John 3: 8 (AV, ' The wind bloweth where it listeth'; Douay, ' The Spirit': 'wind' and 'Spirit' represent the same Greek word). 15, 16. Earlier 'He drew butwhat he was I To draw'. at anchor' (L. iii. 284-6); cf. No. 139, I. 1 5 .

scope:

'the play o f a vessel

1 7-20. Cf. Pater, 'Architecture . . . can only express by vague-hint or symbol the spirit or mind of the artist' (Renaissance , 1 9 1 2, 2 I O). GMH, who thought Milton was a bad man, considered his verse 'something necessary and eternal' (L. ii. 1 3). 1 9, 20. Cf. epigraph to No. 1 3 1 . Orig. ' The manners of the man I Are all indiffer­ ence'. Contr. Patmore's overstressing of architectural rules, J. C.Reid, Mind and Art of Gov. Patmore, 1 957, 2 1 0. 22-3. Orig. ' This sweetness, all this song, I This fault-unfound-with good,', i.e., this good work of art, not found to be at fault. Cf. Gurney, 'On Music and Musical Criticism' (67tf.; see No. 1 3 1 n.), who argued against Plato's attempt to impose a moral censorship on music. 28. Orig., ' That's cloistered by the bee' -possibly a hint that the building had been monastic. The honey's flavour depends on the flowers culled: everything in wild nature, in its 'skeined stained veined variety' (No. 1 67, I. 1 1), has some shade of good (II. 29-30), but the right or wrong of an action is made clear-cut by its relationship to our allegiance (S. 238-41 , 261). 29. Orig. 'For good is greatworld-wi[de] ' 3 1-2. Earlier 'But right must choose its side I To champion, and have done.' 33-4 (cf. No. 1 68, II. 1 7 tf.): orig. 'and what I With that the man shall make'. 35-6. Cf. Josh. 24: 15, 'choose this day . . . whom you would rather serve'. 3 7-40. Earlier 'Meanwhile [before the Day of Judgment?] he makes appear I The music of his mind, I Yet here its marks are mere I Roughhew and rugged rind'. With the lengthening of the final st., and longer lines, cf. Nos. 1 27, 141 . Models are found in many ballads, Wordsworth (e.g. ' We are Seven'), Coleridge, etc.

136 Cheery Beggar MS. H. ii. 2t-autograph draft, unfinished; many deletions. Undated but No. 137 Ouly, Aug. 1 879) is begun on verso. See Facsimiles , ii, Plate 355. Mrs RB's transcript (A, p. 248) brought the error 'fine flower' (4) into early edns.; corrected 1 967. Sprung Rhythm, with outrides, circumflexes (see L. i. 43); great colons after 'Beyond' ( 1 ) and in middle of 'pine, pine' (7).

Commentary on Poems 136-- 137 r.

41 1

place: open space in a city.

3. Earlier, 'Following monthslong falls of rain'. 4, 5. In a hot July the 'air is full of the sweet acid of the limes' O. 249), as it scatters pollen (fine/I.our) and honeydew. gqldnails: gold-headed stamens. gaylinks: orig. 'gaylatchets', flattened bracts, like long yellow-green leaves. 6, 7. The portion of the poem describing their meeting is missing. Cf. Wordsworth's admiration for the aged leech-gatherer, 'Resolution and Independence', 1 38. See L. iii. 1 52, 'there is not much distress at Oxford and plenty of people to relieve it'; also S. 20 (sermon 3 1 Aug. 1 879), on ungrateful beggars.

137 The Bugler's First Communion MSS. r. (H 1 ) H. ii. 2t-earliest autograph draft (ll. 1 -9, 1 2- 1 5 only), de!., on back of No. 136; no title or date. Damaged by having been pasted face down onto pink paper. :z.. (H2 ) H. i. 36•,v; 37''v; 38'-autograph draft, on blue paper, four sides of a double sheet watermarked 1 876 (cf. Nos. 138, 139), and fifth with Britannia watermark. Many different permutations of wording in various lines, with some alternatives left un­ decided. Great colons. Title as in text; dated 'Oxford July 27 (?) 1 879'. 3. A, pp. 1 29-32-autograph fair copy on blue paper, sent to RB 16 Oct. 1 879 (L. i. 92), and mounted in album A: 'sprung rhythm, overrove; an outride between the 3rd and 4th foot of the 4th line in each (quatrain de/. ] stanza'. Dated 'Oxford [Aug. 3 de/. ] July 27 (?). 1 879'. Great colons open ll. 9, 1 7, 4 1 , and occur after 'boy' (2), 'ranks' (18), 'pushed' (23), 'tread' (25), 'Days' (26), 'there' (32); stresses on 'in' (9), 'does' (2 1), 'else' (29), 'me' (36). RB's red ink copies GMH's changes in B to ll. 30, 40, 43. 4. B. 24''v, 25'-transcription by RB, with various slips (e.g. 'Froward' for 'Forward' in I. 48, not noticed by GMH). GMH forrected some errors; he revised ll. 30, 40, 43; added outrides and stresses, some to replace great colons; he later added 'Oxford. 1 879'. Text. Follows A as rev. by GMH in B . See Facsimiles , ii, Plates 354, 356-�. The poem was begun on the Sunday of the event (GMH thought prob. July 27 rather than Aug. 3). On 14 Aug. he told RB 'I hope also soon to shew you a finer thing (than No. 134 and the missing first version of No. 143] , in a metre something like the Eurydice [No. 1 25-this poem is also in Sprung Rhythm with a shortened 3rd line] , not quite finished yet' (L. i. 86-7). He had left Oxford for Bedford Leigh when he sent it in a letter of 8- 1 6 Oct. (L. i. 92-note there misquotes footnote in A, p. 1 32: should read 'ordered to Mooltan in the Punjaub [Multan, W. Pakistan] ; was to sail Sept. 30'): 'I enclose a poem, the Bugler. I am half inclined to hope the Hero of it may be killed in Afghan­ istan' -where British troops were fighting. GMH was deeply concerned over the risk of the lad's falling into mortal sin (ll. 36-48; see NHM, Guide, 1 24-5). See A. Sulloway, Vital Candle ( 1984), 75-6, on the loss of intensity in GMH's parishioner poems. The British army in England and India gave priests very ready access to Catholic soldiers (Month , 54. 1 884, 303 ; A. Bischoff, StAloysius, 9-Fr. Parkinson had been made Catholic Chaplain to Cowley Barracks). GMHtold RB (22 Oct. 1 879) that in Oxford his work had lain not with university men but 'in St. Clement's, at the Barracks, and so on . . . . I can­ not stop to defend the rhymes in the Bugler', he continued, 18 Nov. (L. i. 97)-see rhymes in ll. 2, 3; 5, 8; 46-7. In L. i. 89 (14-21 Aug. 1 879) he had criticized RB's inver­ sions when due to exigencies of verse, claiming to avoid them himself in poetry, but 'I feel my way to their use. However in a nearly finished piece I have a very bold one indeed'-prob. alluding to this poem (see II. 13-14, 34, 37). The troubled syntax mirrors his disturbed hopes and forebodings.

41 2

Commentary on Poem 137

Critical reaction has varied greatly. Phare ( GMH, 1933, 47-9) thought it an example of the poet's inability 'to enter sympathetically into the hearts of other human beings', with a resultant 'forced heartiness'. Auden ( Criterion , 13, Apr. 1934 491)-500) attributed the ' 'dreadful lapse' to 'a conflict . . . between homosexual feelings and a moral sense of guilt', unacknowledged. WHG (Study, ii, 21)6-303), judged its 'breaches of literary decorum . . . integral to the poem's peculiar excellence', expressing 'the keen spiritual delight of the true believer', the hopes and fears of an unusually sensitive priest admin­ istering the Sacrament. Robinson (In Extrem. 97-8) attributes the ' d amaging elements' to 'the confluence of strong feelings . . . -for young maleness, for patriotism, for religion-. . . none of them . . . adequately treated'. McChesney ( Comment. 98) finds it 'full of pleasurable things', a 'fascinating piece oflanguage', its 'fervent idealism' deeply rooted in 'St. lgnatius's soul-challenging view of the Christian life as a call to warfare'. See the 'Postscript' to my lntrod., Facsimiles , i, on GMH's priestly attitude to men and boys throughout his mature poetry, and his equally frequent admiration of female beauty, grace, and moral courage. 1-8. ). Milroy ( Vital Candle , 1 984 1 54) comments that 'the phrasal and clausal ' structure is very elaborate, yet at the same time Hopkins suggests ordinary speech of an informal kind by using the reprise construction ( boy bugler in I. 2) and quasi-spoken asides (it is over the hill There . . . he tells me) ' . But he feels this heavy linguistic texture is applied to material too prosaic for it. 3-4. sire (he: the slur after he shows that to complete the rhyme with Irish , Sh has to be added from Shares in the next line. See note on No. 125, I. 23, for other examples of 'Run-on' or 'Rove-over Rhymes', and my Reader� Guide, 237. fall will : either 'as can happen' to one among siblings (cf. No. 1 0 1 , st. 20, I. 8; cf. S. 1 46 ff.): or perhaps 'whatever may befall him'. • • •

5, 6. GMH explained: 'came into Oxford to our Church in quest of (or to get) a bless­ ing which, on a late occasion of my being up at Cowley Barracks, he had requested of me' (L. i. 97). RB (Poems , 1 st edn., 100) felt the rhyme to communion ('boon he on') 'hideous, and the suspicion that the poet thought it ingenious is appalling'.

9. Here he knelt: earlier (H2 ) 'And knelt at chancel'. 10. Christ from cupboard: the consecrated Host from the tabernacle; cf. S. 29-30, grace drawn from the Blessed Virgin Mary's 'storehouse and cupboard'. how fain I of feet : with what willing feet I take Christ's (? or the boy's) treat to Christ's youngster. . • •

1 1 . treat: cf. communion as a feast, S. 79. 12.. Earlier (H1 ) 'heaven-huge godhead'-flung from heaven (cf. No. 1 0 1 , st. 34, I. 3) and come to rest (latched, lodged) in the lowly wafer, light as a leaf.

13-16. sendings: fortune, gifts (cf. OED 'Send', v.1, 7, 'Of God . . . to ordain as a blessing'). Orig. (H1 ) ' Your sweetest sendings, ah divine I Heavens befall him!' By it: through the Mass. as a heart manse:ii: fine: (gifts) such as a dauntless heart, darling of Christ, an honest tongue without boast or sneer, a fragrant flowering of chaste and splendid manhood. . • •

17-18. Frowning: cf. No. 1 0 1 , st. 3, I. 1. See S. 89-93 on Guardian angels, 'many mis­ chiefs that might befall us our guardian angels do ward off' (92); Ps. 34: 7; 9 1 : 1 1 (Douay 33: 8; 90: u); Heh. 1 : 14. Squander: scatter, drive off, disperse (enemy forces). hell-rook ranks: evil forces [which] sally out to attack him like lines of black rooks

Commentary on Poem 137

413

descending on the good seed (Matt. 13 : 4). RB felt that the omission of 'which' before 'sally' overstrained the English language (Poems , 1 st edn., 100- 1). 20 . Dress . . . to a dexterous . . . order: cf. the military command, 'Dress by the right ! ' The opposite of 'dexterous' (from Lat. dexter, right, propitious) is 'sinister'.

:22-4. limber liquid: as resilient as water, yet (ll. 24, 41) like a stream hurrying along its natural predestined course, with an inborn awareness ofits own best goal. headstrong . . . self-will: used paradoxically in a favourable sense. :28-9. royal ration: cf. other military images, e.g. 'ranks' ( 1 8), 'Dress' (20); 'limber' (22), 'ride' (46). not all so strains: orig. 'nothing else so strains', i.e., makes such demands (all: nothing at all, or on us all). 30-1. Earlier, 'youth all fretted with the flower I [virgule] in its fall portending I Fruit I [virgule] sweet's sweeter ending'-i.e., the scattering of the sweet orchard blossoms is a promise of the sweeter fruit to come: see H. F. Tucker, 'Bloomfall and Inthought', Phil. Q 55, 1 976, 1 34. In B GMH revised the A reading, which was 'not all so strains I Us: boyhood fretted', to 'Us-freshyouth fretted'; 'freshyouth' is presumably one word, as in H. i. 36v: it was earlier 'boyboughs'. 33. sealing sacred ointment: the chrism (olive oil mixed with balm) with which the forehead is anointed during confirmation to seal in grace ( Gath. Diet. Theo/. ii. 92-3). 34-5. The Catholic sacramentals for spiritual safety, in place of the amulets and weapons on which other soldiers might rely for protection. Cf. Purcell, 'Come ye sons of art': ' These are the sacred charms that shield I Her darling hero in the field'. bans off: coinage for 'averts'. 36-8. And [let] not disappointment quell those sweet hopes (whose least quicken­ ings lift me), of some day seeing in scarlet, etc. 39-40. brow and bead: cf. I. 33 n., the chrism on the forehead as the seal of God (Rev. 9: 4, etc.). I.e., A God's own Galahad for our day. 40-2. Though . . . nor . . . but: draft tries in turn ' Though this', ' True, this', 'Now this': the last is adopted in MS A but revised by GMH in B. ' Though . . . but' is unhappy syntax, to reflect his misgivings; 'but' can mean 'nevertheless, yet, however' ( OED , 24). doom: here, favourable edict. rankle: unrecorded variant from dial. 'rangle', wind, wander (EDD 'rangle', v.1 and v.2). 43. In backwheels: rev. from (A) 'By backwheels'; see ]. 2 1 1 , 'wheel', the eddying at a river bend which sets 'slacker water . . . spinning . . . and so working back upstream' (cf. StonyhurstMag. i. 1 8 1 -2). though bound home: though he is heading for home (cf. No. 146, I. 4). 45. Recorded only: variant 'Recorded this', referring back to I.

44,

' That [fear] '.

46. Earlier (H2 ) 'brandle and rack [·or rive] heaven'; variants: 'with hurl and jar', 'with a hurling jar' -prayers flung like cavalry charges or missiles against adamantine gates (cf. Milton, Pl ii. 646), or like waves against a cliff. Cf. Donne, LXX Sennons , 522, quoting from St Gregory and Tertullian, 'Prayer hath the nature of lmpudency; Wee threaten God in prayer . . . And God suffers this lmpudency . . . Prayer hath the nature of Violence; . . . we besiege God . . . and we take God Prisoner'. 48. A difficult line. Forward-like: see OED '-like', suffix, 2b (adv.); like one who is forward, bold, presumptuous. however: nevertheless. like: belike, it is likely that.

Commentary on Poem 138 138 Andromeda MSS. 1. H. i. 40•-autograph, headed 'A.M.D.G.'; fair copy of early version, with alternatives for ll. 2, 3, 9, 10 added at foot. Title and date as in A. 2 . A, pp. 1 27-8-autograph fair copy, dated 'Oxford Aug. 12 1 879', sent to RB 21 Aug. (L. i. 87), and mounted in album A. RB's red ink copied GMH's revisions to ll. 4, 10 from B. 3. Pr-Princeton Univ. Library (acquired 1985 with Robert H. Taylor Collection): autograph entitled 'The Catholic Church Andromeda' and signed 'Gerard Manley Hop­ kins'; sent to Hall Caine, Apr. 1 88 1 , for possible inclusion in his Sonnets of Three Centuries (1882), but rejected along with other GMH sonnets on the advice of D. G. Rossetti. 4. B. 14•-transcription of A by RB, entered in album B, revised by GMH in ll. + 1 0. He added the date 'Oxford. 1 879' later. Text. From A as revised by GMH in B. All MSS have line spaces after lines 4, 8, and 1 1 , no indenting. See Facsimiles , ii, Plates 370-2. GMH wrote to RB about his aims in the poem 14 Aug. (sent 21), 1 879: 'I enclose a sonnet on which I invite minute criticism. I endeavoured in it at a more Miltonic plain­ ness and severity than I have anywhere else. I cannot say it has turned out severe, still less plain,but it seems almost free from quaintness and in aiming at one excellence I may have hit another' (L. i. 87; Poems , 1 st edn., 1 1 2). For Hall Caine's rejection of this and other GMH sonnets because of their irregular metres see L. ii. 46-5 1 ; L. i. 1 27-32, 1 62; Notes andQ 6, 1 959, 1 09- 1 0 (E. W. Mellown). GMH thought this sonnet had 'no novelty of rhythm', but see ll. 3, 9 (a de!. version of!. 9 had an outride). For the legend see Apollodorus, 11 . iv. 3; Ovid, Met. iv. 663 ff. For interpretations of the allegory see WHG, Study , i. 1 85 ff. ; Heuser, Shaping Vision , 77, u4; Schneider, Dragon , 1 78 ff.; Wain, in Hartman, Hopkins , 67 ff.; Mariani, " 'Andromeda" and the New Aestheticism', Viet. Poet. 1 1 . 1, Spring 1 973, 39-54; NHM, Guide, 1 29 ff. Andromeda is normally identified with the Church on earth, Perseus (her future bridegroom) with Christ. See also S. 1 70, 1 77, 1 97-200, 297, for GMH's interest in the woman in the Apocalypse persecuted by the dragon and the beast (Rev. 12: the woman is interpreted in Challoner's notes as the Church of God, and by allusion, the Blessed Virgin). The Andromeda legend, famous in art, was also popular with earlier Victorian writers: Ch. Kingsley (Andromeda , 1 858), Morris, and Browning (see W. DeVane, Yale Rev. 37, 1 947, 33-46; comparison with GMH in R. Langbaum, PMLA 8 1 , Dec. 1 966. 57.8 ff.). Variants include: 2, 3 H Without her either beauty's equal or I Her danger's rev. atft. 2 as text 3 Her danger's in the world, looks off along shore, 4 H, A, Pr 9 H What lets her Perseus 6 Pr With many dragon's food [see below] linger, at these extremes?rev. atft. Her Perseus, [ outride under lastfour letters] can he 1 0 Hft., A Air, pillowy air, he treads a time and lin�r, and leave her in extremes? hangs rev. air, a time he treads so in B, but GMH rev. B as text (and as Pr) 13, 1 4 H Mounts; he to arrive disarming, Pr Mounts; soon to alight, disarming (no 14 H, Pr no virgule one dreams) I With Gorgongear 1 . Time's: cf. ll. 5, J O, Rev. 12: 14; the Church on earth as distinct from the mystical Church in heaven: her sufferings are temporary (Rom. 8: 18; 2 Cor. 4: 1 7). rock rude: see Ovid, Met. iv. 672, duras . . . eautes , rough rocks; OED 'Rude', 1 1 c. Cotter ( Viet. Poet. 16. 4, Winter, 1 978, 3o6) finds a pun on the 'rood'. Michael Moore (HQ 6. 3, Fall 1979, 1 3 1 ff.) quotes Newman, Par. Serm. 1 . xii, end, 'Our light shall never go down; Christ set it upon a hill . . . The Church will witness on to the last for the Truth, chained indeed to this world, its evil partner.'

Commentary on Poems I38-I39 2-3. beauty's . . I injury's: Ps 44: 3 (AV, 45: 2), Lam. 1 : 1 2, both primarily applied to the unequalled beauty and wrongs of Christ (cf. S. 35). horns: from Lat. co.mu O. 4, 25 1), used for an arm of shoreline forming a harbour (Ovid, Met. v. 4 1 0); cf. in Wm. Morris's account of Andromeda, Earthly Par. , Apr., ' The Doom of King Acrisius' (Longmans Green, 1oth edn., i. 267), 'the bay I From horn to horn'. Josephus ( Wars of Jews , III. ix. 3) mentions as the scene the 'curving sides' and rough rocks ofJoppa's west­ facing harbour. See S. Zonnefeld, HQ 7. 4, Winter 1 98 1 , 1 72 for Card. Manning's refer­ ence to the Holy See as between 'East and West,-in the two wings'. .

4. dragon: orig. (H, A, Pr) 'dragon's'. In B the apostrophe 's' was de!., prob. by GMH (and in turn RB shepherd's eye fronting forked lightning'. shepherd's brow: cf. Shak. 2 Henry IV, I. i. 6o-9 (the brow of an eyewitness to some disaster may show the effects on him more vividly than his tongue does). Like the seafarer of Ps. Io6 (AV, Io7): 23-4, who can tell of God's wonders in the deep, the shepherd on lonely hills is exposed to awesome light­ ning displays, proof of God's power (cf. No. I O I , st. 2, I. 2; st. 5, ll. 4-8; No. I I I , II. I, 2). For the special association of lightning with shepherds, see The Times (Lon.), 2 June 1 888, letter from C. Tomlinson, FRS, with spectacular instances of shepherds surviving

Commentary on Poem 178 flashes which killed most of their flocks; Trans. R. Meteor. Soc. I I, I 885, I z ff 'On the Mechanical Characteristics of Lightning Strokes' -the very first example is of a shepherd; Turner's painting, Stonehenge , lit by lightning, revealing a dead shepherd, graphically described by Ruskin, Mod. Paint. ( Works , vii. I 90) ; ] . G. Lockhart, Life ofSir W Scott (Edinbugh, znd edn., I 853, I 5 n.). More narrowly, Cotter (lnscape , 237) accepts Fr. R. B. Clark's identification of the shepherd with Moses at Mt. Sinai, Exod . I9: I 6-zo ( Viet. News. 28, I 965, I6- I 8). But all 'pastors' are shepherds Oohn Z I : I 5), emulating the Good Shepherd Oohn 10: 1 1). fronting: face to face with (GMH probably began to write 'facing', H1 ), confronting. 2.

This line (orig. ending with a colon) was unchanged throughout.

3-4. Orig. (H1 ) ' The fall of awful angels fills their story I With just and giant and majestic groans'; (H2 ) 'Of it: angel-giants [hyphen?] falling fill their story I With just and mighty and majestic groans'; (H3 ) 'angels fall, giants (bracketed with towers and

mountains] '; (H5 ) 'Angels fall, t� , from heaven: their story I Has just, has giant, has majestic groans'. Milton's fallen angels were at first gigantic (PL i. 1 92-zO I ; 57I-7; 77680; vii. 605), and are compared to the Titans who warred on Jove (cf. Keats, Hyperion , i. I 58-63, 'woe I Too huge for mortal tongue . . . The Titans fierce . . . Groaned . . . in sharp pain'). See commentators on Gen. 6: 4 for the association of the fallen angels with giants. The groans are just, i.e. justified by the magnitude of their sufferings, whereas a child bawls ifhe trips and falls. towers . . . heaven: cf. Milton, PL i. 589-91 , Satan, 'proudly eminent, I Stood like a Tower'; 740-5 1 ; vi. uo; S. 202 (rebel angels on their 'self-raised . . . towers of eminence'), contr. zoo; Luke 10: 1 8, 'Satan like lightning falling from heaven' (PL i. 1 75); Gen. u: 4, the Tower of Babel, its top designed to 'reach to heaven'. The Eiffel Tower, nicknamed ' The Tower of Babel', was rumoured to have insecure foundations, making some Parisians fear it might fall on them ( The Times , Lon., 19 May I 888, 7d). On 3 Apr. I889 (the date given in H3, where 'towers' first appears), the Irish Times (4h) reported in hostile terms the proud flag-raising ceremony which marked the Eiffel's attainment of its full height of 300 metres, by far the tallest man-made structure, dwarfing all sacred cathedrals. A scientific study of lightning, which proverbially strikes towers, was to be conducted from its peak (cf. l. I), and Iz huge scaf­ folds had surrounded it (cf. l. 5; see NHM, Guide , 205-6; Mariani, Viet. Poet. I 1 . I , Spr­ ing I973, 42 n.). GMH repeatedly alluded to the pride and fall of Lucifer and his angels, e.g. S. 63, 1 07-8, I I O- I I , 137, 1 78-80, 200-2, 336-7. 5. scaffold: cf. L. i. 229, 'all my world is scaffolding'. score brittle bones: the 20 fixed ribs; cf. Milton, PL i. 423-8, 'brittle strength of bones'. 6. Who breathe: H3, 'Breathers,'-man lives only from breath to breath, from one meal or spoonful to the next (I. 9, 'Hand to mouth'). Cf. Eccles. 3: 19; Shak. Meas. 111. i. 8, 'A breath thou art'. from groundlong babyhood: cf. Wisd. 7: 3 (Knox), 'Born was I, and born drew in the common air; dust amid dust I fell, and, baby-fashion, my first utterance was a cry'. Cf. and contr. the towering angels who fell 'headlong' (PL i. 45, 750; ii. 772; vi. 864). groundlong: clearly one word in H1 and H4; adj . coinage not yet in OED -on or along the ground; cf. OED '-long' (suffix, e.g. in 'along', 'endlong'), and '-ling' (with diminutive or depreciatory force), which sometimes interacts; also 'groundling', OED , za, 5. 7. Cf. Thomas Fuller, ' The first Breath is the beginning of Death' (Gnomologia , No. 4524); Ps. 103 (AV, 1 04): 29; Dan. 5 : 23. 8. What deep tragic resonance can our frail human lives provide? Orig. (H1 ) ' What bass can his lute bear to tragic tones?' Contr. the themes of Nos. I 57, I 76, I 77· Cf.

Commentary on Poems 178-179

5 05

Milton, ' The Passion', st. 4, 'Me softer airs befit, and softer strings I Oflute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things' than for 'godlike acts' and 'temptations fierce'. The viol d 'amore , or treble viol, had a soft and delicate tone; there is a play on 'base', 'vile'. Cf. Hor. Walpole, ' The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel' (letter to Sir Horace Mann, 1 769). 9. voids with shame: cf. Cicero, De Officiis , 1. xxxv . 1 26-7, a work prescribed for GMH's Latin students in 1 886 and 1 887 (HQ 2. 3, Oct. 1 975, 1 09); Shak. Lear, 111. iv. 1091 1 , 'Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal'. 10. blazoned in: H1, H3, H\ 'blazoned with'; conspicuously proclaimed; cf. Ps. 145 (AV, 146): 3, 4, 'Do not put your trust in princes; they are but men, . . . As soon as the breath leaves his body, man goes back to the dust he belongs to' (Knox). u. I.e. 'the man is just [simply] Man Jack'. H4 hyphenates 'Man-Jack'. See OED 'Jack', sb. 1, 2c; 'Man', sb. 1, 4ffi ; 'reducible in all bodily needs and functions to one common human pattern'. hussy: OED , 2, 'A rustic, rude, opprobrious, or playfully rude mode of addressing a woman'; 3, 'In some rural districts a mere equivalent of Woman, lass' (cf. EDD) . In mating and defecation all share a common human nature (cf. L. iii. 1 9; L. i. 1 10). 12. these deaths: crises like those of staged heroes; cf. 'a thousand deaths', etc., Shak. Titus Andr. 11. i. 79; Corio/anus III. iii. 70; I Henry IV, III. ii. 1 58; Meas. 1 1 1 . i. 39. that feed: H1, 'or feed'; H3, 'that fan'. flame: cf. I. 14. 13, 14. Many variants, incl. (H1 ) ' In spoons have seen my masque played and how tame I My tempest and my spitfire freaks how fussy', or 'and say tame I My tempest is, my spitfire freaks are fussy'; (H3 ) 'my spitfire frenzy fussy'. The three dots in I. 13 mark the speaker's descent from his sublime pose to awareness of the ridiculous. The sight of himself reflected in the bowl of a spoon, as on a stage, diminished and distorted, helps him to recognize his histrionic passions as tame, and his hot-headed frenzy as provoked by mere trifles (fussy). Mariani quotes George Eliot, Middlemarch , Bk. 1, eh. x, 'even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin' ( Viet. Poet. 6. 1 , 67). tempests: cf. Cicero, 'He stirred up a tempest in a wine ladle' (De Legibus , III. xvi. 36). fire: cf. Shak. Ham. III. iv. 1 25, 'upon the heat and flame of thy distemper I Sprinkle cool patience'.

1 79 To R. B. MSS. 1 . H. ii. 45v-autograph draft, with revisions of II. 9- 1 4 at foot, on the back of drafts of No. 1 78. Untitled, dated 'April 22 1 889'. Many letters are roughly shaped. 2. A, p. 196-autograph fair copy, dated 'April 22 1 889'; title and marginal braces as text; sent to RB in GMH's last letter before his death, 29 Apr. 1 889 (L. i. 304), and mounted in album A. See Facsimiles , ii, Plates 522-3. Letters from RB to Dixon in 1 889 provide a background (first publ. in Selected Letters of Robert Bridges , ed. Donald E. Stanford, i. 1 85-6, 1 88). On 14 June RB wrote to tell Dixon 'the terribly mournful tidings of Gerard's death'. 'His last letters to me and the two last poems are if not a foreboding of it, yet full of a strange fitness for the end. The last poem but one [No. 1 77, since RB was not sent 1 78] was an address to God, most powerful and plaintive. The last was a sonnet to me, explaining some misunderstanding which he thought existed.' On 10 Aug. 1 889 he promised to send Dixon GMH's last letters and verses. ' The last letter he wrote to me I have, but very strangely it happened that the only two letters of his which I ever destroyed were the two which he wrote me preceding that. I will tell you all about it when we meet, but it was very like a sort of quarrel. He

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Commentary on Poem 179

said in his last letter that he had been joking, and he added a sonnet (very sad) in "explanation"but it did not read like joking, and the letters were rather bitter, so that I put them in the fire-of course I wish now that I had not done so . . . . I have proposed to edit some of his verses-Daniel to print them- with a short memorial life of him .' (See Select. Letters of RB I 89-% for RB's immediate approach to Daniel.) Judging from L. i. 302-4, GMH seems to have made fun of the minuscule edns. of RB's books: batches of only 36, or 30 or 22, some privately printed by Henry Daniel of Worcester College, Oxford . RB may well have retorted that unlike GMH (who was always proposing works which did not materialize), he was at least completing poems and plays and having them printed. In this sonnet GMH blames his 'winter world'. GMH's tentative ' I believe I enclose a new sonnet' (L. i. 304) must, since it was then only a week old, indicate a doubt as to whether he would hold it back for revision or later tran­ scription. The sonnet may have been conceived on Lord Massy's estate, Killakee, Rath­ farnham, Co. Dublin (Burke 's Guide to Country Houses , i. Ireland, I 978, I 69): see GMH's sketch dated 'Lord Massey's [sic] domain, Co. Dublin, April 22 I 889', facing ]. 457. For criticism see, e.g., Eliz. Phare (Poetry ofGMH 26-8); WHG, Study , ii. 365-67; Mariani, Comment. 3 1 1 - I 7; NHM, Guide, 207-9; W. M. Gibson, Explic. 6. 2, Nov. I 947 I2j Yvor ' Winters, Function of Crit. I 5 I i M. Sprinker, Counterpoint, I 27-9; L. Adey, ' Images that Wake' ('Hopkins in Ireland' I 984 conference paper). GMH believed that both poet and priest had to rely upon fleeting visions of the spiritual, and that poetry could be an act of piety (see, e.g., S. 253-4; L. ii. I 48 on the intercessions of the saints for Wordsworth's Immortality Ode). Only at rare intervals does God's grandeur flame out (Nos. I 1 1 , II. I -4; I O I , st. 5): when it does it may bring either 'fine delight' and 'extreme enthusiasm' (No. I 24), or touch the sensitive soul with the lancing jet of lightning, an 'exquisite smart' in which tears and bliss seem simul­ taneous (No. I O I , sts. I, 2, I 8). 1 . fine: pure, perfect; delicate; sharp, keen-edged; cf. 'fine pleasure', L. i. 221 . thought; : orig. 'thought,'. Delight and the lancing flame may b e opposites o r co-exist. The mood in which the creative impulse most frequently arises may vary from awe to melancholy, joy, or anguish according to the poet (C. M. Bowra, Poetry and Inspiration , I955, 3, 4). See also George Whalley, Poetic Process ( I953), eh. 5. :z. Spur: cf. L. ii. 6, also 2-3 Oune I 878) on Milton's 'Fame is the spur'-a spur very hard for neglected poets to do without (Mariani, HQ 4. I, Spring I 977• 24); S. 70, 72, 262. lancing: orig. 'lanced', then 'lanced-out'. Yet the fire is 'Sweet' (I. 9) and brings 'bliss' (I. I 3). See his description of inspiration, of thoughts which 'strike into' [the mind) unasked', L. iii. 2 I 6. blowpipe: cf. S. I 37, 'some main stress from without . . . as the current of air in the blowpipe casts . . . a jet of flame . . . . The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are spoken of as seven spirits, seven jets or currents of breath'; L. i. 270 Oan. I 888), ' It is now years that I have had no inspiration of longer jet than makes a sonnet' (cf. p. 66). See OED 'Fire', sb., I 3C, used for inspiration; S. 74-5 on tongues of fire symbolizing the Holy Spirit, Acts 2: 3; also the shaft of divine light, symbolic of God the Word, shown from the sixth century onwards as entering the Virgin Mary's head at the Annunciation (A. Grabar, Christian Iconography , Princeton, I 968, I28), e.g. in Crivelli's painting, Nat. Gallery, London: see Aquinas, Sum. Theo/. m, Q. 32, a, ad I, gloss on 'overshadow' in Luke I: 35, 'the incorporeal Light of the Godhead shall in thee [Mary] take the corporeal substance of human nature: for a shadow is formed by light and body'. GMH regarded his inspiration as from God; cf. No. I O I , st. 30; Milton, PL iii. 5 1 'thou celestial Light I Shine inward, and the mind thi;ough all her powers I Irradiate'.

Commentary on Poem 179 3. Breathes once: orig. 'Can speak', then 'Can spring'. 4. mother: cf. Gray's 'Elegy', 46, 'Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire'. Contr. No. 1 54, I. 5 , 'England . . . wife I To my creating thought'. 5, 6. Orig. 'Nine months it maybe then or nine years long I She wears within, she bears and cares the same;'. The gestation of a poem, while its author reflects and con­ sults friends, may be twelve times that of a child, as Horace (A rs Poetica , 386-9) and Pope ('Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot', 40-6) had advised. GMH's 'St Winefred's Well' (No. 153), begun 1 879, was still unfinished at his death. wears: see OED , v.1, 6, ' To bear or possess as a member or part of the body'; para. 8, ' To carry about with one in one's heart, mind, or memory'; cf. 2ob, ' To bring (a person) gradually into (a habit or disposi­ tion)'. bears: carries; OED , v. 1 , 1, quotes one example, 1 8 1 6, ' The wretch who bore them in her womb'. cares: here transitive, a usage GMH himself contributed to EDD , ' To take care of, to tend. /r [eland] . To care a horse or a room' (see 'List of Unprinted Collections of Dialect Words Quoted in the Dictionary by the Initials of the Compilers', EDD , i. xii). combs: the poet disentangles the strands of his embryonic poem, or embodies his inspiration in structured form (the marginal braces here perhaps symbolizing the honeycomb); but critics disagree on how a mother can comb an unborn child. GMH's illness and death (8 June 1 889) prevented any inter­ change of ideas with RB, which had mutually benefited their poetry. As a medical doctor, RB found no physiological sense in 'combs', but felt the poem such a moving obituary that he included it in selections of GMH's verse for A. Miles, The Poets and Poetry ofthe Century , viii (1 893), 1 70, replacing 'combs' with 'moulds' from GMH's poem on the Virgin Mary's shaping of the unborn Jesus (No. 1 5 1 , I. 1 04). Miles protested in a footnote, but RB kept the substitute in his 1 st edn. ( 1 2 1), 'having no doubt that G.M.H. would have made some such alteration'. He had indeed previously accepted RB's advice. W. B. Yeats in 1 9 1 5 urged Rabindranath Tagore to allow RB to make a small revision in the standard translation of his Gitanjali, so that he could include it in The Spirit of Man , assuring Tagore 'no living man is so well fitted to measure and emend a detail. . . . I would be grateful should he care to revise a poem of mine' ( Correspondence of Robert Bridges and W. B. Yeats , ed. R. J. Finneran, 1 977, 40- 1). Even F. R. Leavis felt RB might 'be excused for venturing to correct' a sonnet addressed to himself (New Bearings , 1 932, 1 9 1 -2), but, he added, ' To use so weak a word as "moulds" in this place is most unlike Hopkins [Leavis seems unaware that GMH had used 'moulds' in an earlier parallel] . . . "combs" imposes itself as "right" on the unprejudiced sensibility.' Yet his only explana­ tion was 'prolepsis ': 'combs' anticipates what the mother will do to the child after birth. Schoder (Imm. Diam. 2 1 4) has 'put into order, as by combing' -applicable to a poem, not embryo. WHG, rightly restoring 'combs' in 3rd edn. (see NHM, 4th edn., lii-liii), thought it 'probably used in the two-edged sense of (1) clean, unravel, and (2) store, mature-as in a honeycomb' (253); cf. No. 1 62, I. 14. ('Comb' as a verb from 'honeycomb' is not recorded in OED , EDD , or earlier diets.) R. Bremer (Eng. Stud. , Amsterdam, 5 1 . 2, April 1 970, 144-8) usefully surveys previous explanations (including Peters, GMH 1 65), and classifies 1 5 other uses of 'comb' as noun or verb in Poems or J (he omits ]. 209, 225, 235 bot., 239, 26o). He finds the nearest parallel in ' The Wreck' (No. 1 0 1 , st. 4, I. 4), 'it crowds and it combs to the fall'. But this is intrans. Moreover, as Bremer takes that line to refer to an hour-glass emptying itself downward, not to the incoming tide, it is hard to see how he deduces that 'combs' there must mean 'to fill out to the utmost, to top, to fill to tumbling'. Yet some notion of a cresting wave may help to explicate 'combs' in ' To RB'. Dixon's long poem, 'Love's Consolation', which GMH laboriously copied

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Commentary on Poem 179

out in 1 868 before entering the Novitiate, has a strange metaphor, like a 1 ']th-cent. Emblem or metaphysical conceit (one of the two images GMH liked best in all Dixon's poetry), of a 'heart combed round with hair' (L. ii. 1, 77, 1 7 1 , Oct. 1 881): 'of us some I About our hearts meshed the loved hair with comb I Of our great love, to twine and glisten there, I And when 'twas stiffened in our life blood dear I Then was it rent away; . . . how our eyes draw fire I From the fire-fount of pain!' (Se/. Poems , 47-8; GMH's MS. p. 50) . GMH matched this haunting image of affection in No. 153 (Act 1 , Sc. i, ll. 1 2- 1 5). Here the mother (poet) could equally well be said to comb round ·with increasing love the child in the womb (unpublished poem); cf. L. ii. 8, ' It is sad to think what dis­ appointment must many times over have filled your heart for the darling children of your mind.' Dixon's metaphor haunted GMH from 1 862 to 1 889: he mentioned it in his notice of Dixon for T. Arnold's Manual ofEng. Lit. ( 1 885), 471 (see Dublin Note-book, 1 5v, draft, 'the image of the heart hair·fastened round the heart'). 'Farfetchedness' was a quality GMH admired (L. i. 82). 7. widow: contr. L. ii. 133 CTune 1 886), a tentative passage where, 'on better con­ sideration', he throws off the opinion that 'the male quality is the creative gift' ('the genius, the spirituality, the invention'), while 'masterly execution' ('the begetting one's thoughts on paper . . . the life must be conveyed into the work and be displayed there') is not a female quality, but the attainment of male puberty, manhood. GMH's recurrent 'eunuch' image (see No. 1 77, I. 13 n.), reflects a feeling of creative impotence. His practice of dating poems (as with No. 1 7 1 ) from their first conception, not their birth at full term, indicates the importance to him of the moment of insight. insight lost: such stress is seldom laid on the irrecoverableness of the original vision (except where the resulting poem remains a fragment, as with Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'); but cf. Wordsworth's 'poetry . . . takes its origin in emotion' which has subsequently to be 'recollected' after the emotion has passed into 'tranquillity'. aim: cf. S. 262, 'What is life without aim, without spur'. 8. now never wrong: contr. 'all my undertakings miscarry' (S. 262) and misgivings such as L. i. 221 -2 (both repeating the eunuch image); L. i. 66, 'I have of myself made verse so laborious'. 9, 10. Orig. 'Delight the sire of muse, my mind needs this I I want the rare rapture of an inspiration.' muse: poetry. sire . . . rapture: these continue the sexual imagery. 1 1-14. Earlier, 'O in my laboured lines then if you miss I The fire, the fall, the keen­ ness, the creation I Believe my withered world knows no such bliss: I Rebuke no more, but read my explanation.' 1 2 . Earlier, ' The flame, the flow, the courage, the creation,'; rev. to ' The wild wing, waft, cry, carol, and creation,'; then ' The wing, the waft, the carol, the creation'. roll . . . rise . . . carol: earlier readings confirm that the imagery is from bird behaviour in spring, their display flights, mating songs, and mating (see J. Dorst, Life ofBirds , NY, 1974, i. 1 97-201 , steep rises, rolling, swooping flights). 13. Earlier, 'My withered world breaks into no such bliss'; ' This withered world of me, that breathes no bliss'. winter world: contr. with spring, the season oflove. Cf. L. iii. 1 95 (2 Mar. 1 889), ' The weather is wintry . . . . steadily snowing. But the political weather is beyond measure severer to me.' 14. Eliz. Phare (Poetry of GMH, CUP, 1 933, 28), 'the last line . . . conveys, almost onomatop[o] eically, a strong sense of the difficulty which his muse has in producing even a few scanty words. The sonnet goes in a diminuendo down to the last flat dull

Commentary on Poem 179 and Appendix A word "explanation".' Yet, paradoxically, many may agree with Robinson (ln Extrem. 1 58) ' When one looks at the three sonnets which he wrote in the last months of his life one is given good grounds for believing that, had he lived, Hopkins would only have strengthened his already considerable claim on our attention.'

Appendix A: Original Lines on a Fossil Tree in a Garden at Highgate [anonymous] This poem was published without name or initials in May 1 863, in the newly founded parish magazine of St Michael's Church, Highgate, which supplied the place of a chapel for GMH's Highgate School. The late Fr. Alfred Thomas, SJ, encountering the poem in the 1