The Windhover”→
Complete Text
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Manley Hopkins who wrote this poem was a Catholic priest who saw God in all the beautiful things on earth, he was interested in creating a sound that like the impressionist painters gives us a feeling instead of an insight, his language therefore gives us a tremendous surge of incredible passion. Today I read this poem to my first year class. I think that they loved it because I got a round of applause but in reality I had already heard this spoken by a very good actor years ago in London so I knew how it should be read. Minion can mean follower or darling or angel, I think in this instance it means darling "Darling of the morning". In my opinion this is maybe the greatest poem ever written. Hopkins died never knowing his genius , he was only celebrated after his death. The reason was that he considered his poems as not very good. I love someone like him who was totally free of ego. the Windhover is full of hope.To see a beautiful creature display such grace is the sense of this great poem.But there is the dedication To Christ our Lord, why?Is it a mere dedication?The real glory of Christ lies revealed in his mastery of Nature (in Hopkins’ religious view) and its acts and changes.Christ shows his true mastery maybe not in human beings but in the glory of this bird, its as if Christ said after making Human beings "well now I am really going to create something".By “fire” he means “glory,” an old term which means not only fame and laud but also great light, like the “glory hole” of a glass blower’s furnace, through which the intense blazing fire is seen. He sees the glory of Christ in the glory of Nature and its creatures — specifically here in the windhover. He sees the fire, the “glory” of Christ in the windhover, and he is more than impressed, knowing that the totality of the glory of Christ is astoundingly more multiplied and impressive, “a billion times told lovelier,” and he feels it so overwhelming as to be dangerous. There is often a sense of danger associated with something felt to be incredibly holy and powerful.Surprisingly, even if one does not take the time necessary to decipher Hopkins, one may still derive a great deal of pleasure from his use of repetition of sounds, and from such vivid images as dark coals that “gash gold-vermilion.” But I hope what I have said here will be of some use to those readers who want to go a bit deeper.
Hopkins’ use of “gall” also has some ambiguity when he speaks of ”blue-bleak embers” that “fall, gall, and gash themselves gold-vermilion.” ”Gall” means to swell, but it also can mean “to damage or break the surface,” and in fact Hopkins uses it in this latter sense in his poem St. Alphonsus Rodriguez:
Complete Text
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Manley Hopkins who wrote this poem was a Catholic priest who saw God in all the beautiful things on earth, he was interested in creating a sound that like the impressionist painters gives us a feeling instead of an insight, his language therefore gives us a tremendous surge of incredible passion. Today I read this poem to my first year class. I think that they loved it because I got a round of applause but in reality I had already heard this spoken by a very good actor years ago in London so I knew how it should be read. Minion can mean follower or darling or angel, I think in this instance it means darling "Darling of the morning". In my opinion this is maybe the greatest poem ever written. Hopkins died never knowing his genius , he was only celebrated after his death. The reason was that he considered his poems as not very good. I love someone like him who was totally free of ego. the Windhover is full of hope.To see a beautiful creature display such grace is the sense of this great poem.But there is the dedication To Christ our Lord, why?Is it a mere dedication?The real glory of Christ lies revealed in his mastery of Nature (in Hopkins’ religious view) and its acts and changes.Christ shows his true mastery maybe not in human beings but in the glory of this bird, its as if Christ said after making Human beings "well now I am really going to create something".By “fire” he means “glory,” an old term which means not only fame and laud but also great light, like the “glory hole” of a glass blower’s furnace, through which the intense blazing fire is seen. He sees the glory of Christ in the glory of Nature and its creatures — specifically here in the windhover. He sees the fire, the “glory” of Christ in the windhover, and he is more than impressed, knowing that the totality of the glory of Christ is astoundingly more multiplied and impressive, “a billion times told lovelier,” and he feels it so overwhelming as to be dangerous. There is often a sense of danger associated with something felt to be incredibly holy and powerful.Surprisingly, even if one does not take the time necessary to decipher Hopkins, one may still derive a great deal of pleasure from his use of repetition of sounds, and from such vivid images as dark coals that “gash gold-vermilion.” But I hope what I have said here will be of some use to those readers who want to go a bit deeper.
Hopkins’ use of “gall” also has some ambiguity when he speaks of ”blue-bleak embers” that “fall, gall, and gash themselves gold-vermilion.” ”Gall” means to swell, but it also can mean “to damage or break the surface,” and in fact Hopkins uses it in this latter sense in his poem St. Alphonsus Rodriguez:
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