Been preferred. In the very few instances in which this
principle was overruled, as in Nos. _1_ and _27_, the justi-
fication will be found in the note to the poem. The finished
poems from _1_ to _51_ are ranged chronologically by the years, but
in the section _52_-_74_ a fanciful grouping of the fragments was
preferred to the inevitable misrepresentations of conjectural
dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and
however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his
first draft. Thus _Handsome Heart_ was written and sent to me
in '79; and the recast, which I reject, was not made before '83,
while the final corrections may be some years later; and yet his
last autograph is dated as the first 'Oxford '79'.
_Selection_ This edition purports to convey all the author's serious
Mature poems; and he would probably not have wished any
of his earlier poems nor so many or his fragments to
have been included. Of the former class three specimens only
are admitted--and these, which may be considered of exceptional
merit or interest, had already been given to the public--but of
the latter almost everything; because these scraps being of mature
date, generally contain some special beauty of thought or diction,
and are invariably of metrical or rhythmical interest: some of
them are in this respect as remarkable as anything in the volume.
As for exclusion, no translations of any kind are published here,
whether into Greek or Latin from the English of which there
are autographs and copies in _A_ or the Englishing of Latin
hymns occurring in _H_: these last are not in my opinion of
special merit; and with them I class a few religious pieces which
will be noticed later.
_Author's Prosody_ Of the peculiar scheme of prosody invented and
developed by the author a full account is out of the question. His
own preface together with his description of the metrical scheme of
each poem--which is always, wherever it exists, transcribed in the
notes--may be a sufficient guide for practical purposes. Moreover,
the intention of the rhythm, in places where it might seem doubtful,
has been indicated by accents printed over the determining
syllables: in the later poems these accents correspond generally
with the author's own marks: in the earlier poems they do not, but
are trustworthy translations.
_Marks_ It was at one time the author's practice to use a very
elaborate system of marks, all indicating the speech-movement: the
autograph (in _A_) of _Harry Ploughman_ carries seven different
marks, each one defined at the foot. When reading through his
letters for the purpose of determining dates, I noted a few
sentences on this subject which will justify the method that I
have followed in the text. In 1883 he wrote: 'You were right to
leave out the marks: they were not consistent for one thing, and
are always offensive. Stilt there must be some. Either I must
invent a notation applied throughout as in music or else I must
only mark where the reader is likely to mistake, and for the
present this is what I shall do.' And again in '85: 'This is my
difficulty, what marks to use and when to use them: they are so
much needed and yet so objectionable. (_Punctuation_) About
punctuation my mind is clear: I can give a rule for everything I
write myself, and even for other people, though they might
not agree with me perhaps.' In this last matter the autographs
are rigidly respected, the rare intentional aberration being
scrupulously noted. And so I have respected his indentation of
the verse; but in the sonnets, while my indentation corresponds,
as a rule, with some autograph, I have felt free to consider
conveniences, following, however, his growing practice to eschew
it altogether.
Apart from questions of taste--and if these poems were to be
arraigned for errors of what may be called taste,
they might be convicted of occasional affectation in
metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal-
wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling,
as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary
side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force
emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com-
fortless unconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be
instressed stressed', or, again, the exaggerated Marianism of
some pieces, or the naked encounter of sensualism and asceticism
which hurts the 'Golden Echo'.--
_Style_ Apart, I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they
numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy
than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness--
apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader
must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before
he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the
poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even
a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and
are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be
clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of
those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances
are and will remain what they were. Nor can credit be gained from
pointing them out: yet, to put readers at their ease, I will here
define them: they may be called Oddity and Obscurity; (_Oddity_)
and since the first may provoke laughter when a writer serious (and
this poet is always serious), while the latter must prevent him from
being understood (and this poet has always something to say), it
may be assumed that they were not a part of his intention. Something
of what he thought on this subject may be seen in the following
extracts from his letters. In Feb. 1879, he wrote: 'All therefore
that I think of doing is to keep my verses together in one place--
at present I have not even correct copies--, that, if anyone should
like, they might be published after my death. And that again is
unlikely, as well as remote. . . . No doubt my poetry errs on the
side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic
style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music
and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the
habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now
it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive
and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I
cannot have escaped.' And again two months later: 'Moreover
the oddness may make them repulsive at first and yet Lang
might have liked them on a second reading. Indeed when, on
somebody returning me the _Eurydice_, I opened and read some
lines, as one commonly reads whether prose or verse, with the
eyes, so to say, only, it struck me aghast with a kind of raw
nakedness and unmitigated violence I was unprepared for: but
take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be
read, and my verse becomes all right.'
_Obscurity_ As regards Oddity then, it is plain that the poet was
Himself fully alive to it, but he was not sufficiently aware of
obscurity, and he could not understand why his friends found his
sentences so difficult: he would never have believed that, among
all the ellipses and liberties of his grammar, the one chief cause
is his habitual omission of the relative pronoun; and yet this is
so, and the examination of a simple example or two may serve a
general purpose:
_Omission of relative pronoun_ This grammatical liberty, though it
is a common convenience in conversation and has therefore its
proper place in good writing, is apt to confuse the parts of speech,
and to reduce a normal sequence of words to mere jargon. Writers
who carelessly rely on their elliptical speech-forms to govern the
elaborate sentences of their literary composition little know what
a conscious effort of interpretation they often impose on their
readers. But it was not carelessness in Gerard Hopkins: he had full
skill and practice and scholarship in conventional forms, and it is
easy to see that he banished these purely constructional syllables
from his verse because they took up room which he thought he could
not afford them: he needed in his scheme all his space for his
poetical words, and he wished those to crowd out every merely gram-
matical colourless or toneless element; and so when he had got
into the habit of doing without these relative pronouns--though
he must, I suppose, have supplied them in his thought,--he
abuses the licence beyond precedent, as when he writes (no. _17_)
'O Hero savest!' for 'O Hero that savest!'.
_Identical Forms_ Another example of this (from the 5th stanza of
no. _23_) will discover another cause of obscurity; the line
'Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him'
means 'Scatter the ranks that sally to molest him':
but since the words _squander_ and _sally_ occupy similar positions
in the two sections of the verse, and are enforced by a similar
accentuation, the second verb deprived of its pronoun will follow
the first and appear as an imperative; and there is nothing to
prevent its being so taken but the contradiction that it makes in
the meaning; whereas the grammar should expose and enforce
the meaning, not have to be determined by the meaning. More-
over, there is no way of enunciating this line which will avoid the
confusion; because if, knowing that _sally_ should not have
the same intonation as _squander_, the reader mitigates the accent,
and in doing so lessens or obliterates the caesural pause which
exposes its accent, then _ranks_ becomes a genitive and _sally_
a substantive.
Here, then, is another source of the poet's obscurity; that in
aiming at condensation he neglects the need that there is for care
in the placing of words that are grammatically ambiguous.
English swarms with words that have one identical form for
substantive, adjective, and verb; and such a word should never
be so placed as to allow of any doubt as to what part of speech
it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty
destroys the force of the sentence. Now our author not only
neglects this essential propriety but he would seem even to
welcome and seek artistic effect in the consequent confusion;
and he will sometimes so arrange such words that a reader
looking for a verb may find that he has two or three ambiguous
monosyllables from which to select, and must be in doubt as to
which promises best to give any meaning that he can welcome;
and then, after his choice is made, he may be left
with some homeless monosyllable still on his hands. (_Homophones_)
Nor is our author apparently sensitive to the irrelevant
suggestions that our numerous homophones cause; and he
will provoke further ambiguities or obscurities by straining the
meaning of these unfortunate words.
_Rhymes_ Finally, the rhymes where they are peculiar are often
repellent, and so far from adding charm to the verse that they
appear as obstacles. This must not blind one from recognizing
that Gerard Hopkins, where he is simple and straightforward
in his rhyme is a master of it--there are many instances,--but
when he indulges in freaks, his childishness is incredible. His
intention in such places is that the verses should be recited
as running on without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their
midst should be like a phonetic accident, merely satisfying the
prescribed form. But his phonetic rhymes are often indefensible
on his own principle. The rhyme to _communion_ in 'The Bugler'
is hideous, and the suspicion that the poet thought it ingenious is
appalling: _eternal_, in 'The Eurydice', does not correspond with
_burn all_, and in 'Felix Randal' _and some_ and _handsome_ is as
truly an eye-rhyme as the _love_ and _prove_ which he despised and
abjured; and it is more distressing, because the old-fashioned
conventional eye-rhymes are accepted as such without speech-
adaptation, and to many ears are a pleasant relief from the fixed
jingle of the perfect rhyme; whereas his false ear-rhymes ask to
have their slight but indispensable differences obliterated in the
reading, and thus they expose their defect, which is of a disagree-
able and vulgar or even comic quality. He did not escape full
criticism and ample ridicule for such things in his lifetime; and
in '83 he wrote: 'Some of my rhymes I regret, but they are past
changing, grubs in amber: there are only a few of these; others
are unassailable; some others again there are which malignity
may munch at but the Muses love.'
_Euphony and emphasis_ Now these are bad faults, and, as I said, a
reader, if he is to get any enjoyment from the author's genius,
must be somewhat tolerant of them; and they have a real relation
to the means whereby the very forcible and original effects of
beauty are produced. There is nothing stranger in these poems than
the mixture of passages of extreme delicacy and exquisite diction
with passages where, in a jungle of rough root-words, emphasis
seems to oust euphony; and both these qualities, emphasis and
euphony, appear in their extreme forms. It was an idiosyncrasy
of this student's mind to push everything to its logical extreme,
and take pleasure in a paradoxical result; as may be seen in his
prosody where a simple theory seems to be used only as a basis for
unexampled liberty. He was flattered when I called him
_perittutatos_, and saw the humour of it--and one would expect
to find in his work the force of emphatic condensation and the
magic of melodious expression, both in their extreme forms. Now
since those who study style in itself must allow a proper place
to the emphatic expression, this experiment, which supplies as
novel examples of success as of failure, should be full of
interest; and such interest will promote tolerance.
The fragment, of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is
the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an
artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own
nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible
for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when,
to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the
force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and
castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will read the
terrible posthumous sonnets without such high admiration and
respect for his poetical power as must lead them to search out the
rare masterly beauties that distinguish his work.
NOTES
PAGE 1. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This is from B, and must have
been written in '83 or not much later. The punctuation
has been exactly followed, except that I have added
a comma after the word _language_ in the last line but one
of page 5, where the omission seemed an oversight.
p.4, l. 21. _rove over_. This expression is used here to denote
the running on of the sense and sound of the end of
a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning
is not easily to be found in the word.
The two words _reeve_ (pf. _rove_, which is also a pf. of
_rive_) and _reave_ (pf. _reft_) are both used several times by
G.M.H., but they are both spelt _reave_. In the present
context _rove_ and _reaving_ occur in his letters, and the
spelling _reeve_ in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably due
to the copyists.
There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of
the meaning of the nautical term _reeve_. No. 39 line 10 (the
third passage where _reeve_, spelt _reave_, occurs, and a
nautical meaning is required--see the note there--) would
be satisfied by _splice_ (nautical); and if this notion were
influenced by _weave_, _wove_, that would describe the inter-
weaving of the verses. In the passage referred to in 'The
Deutschland' _reeve_ is probably intended in its dialectal or
common speech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect
Dictionary', where the first sense of the verb given is to
bring together the 'gathers' of a dress: and in this sense
_reeve_ is in common use.
p. 7. EARLY POEMS. Two school prize-poems exist; the date of
the first, 'The Escorial', is Easter '60, which is before
Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian
stanza: the imperfect copy in another hand has the first
15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author has written
on it his motto, _Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda_,
with an accompanying gloss to explain his allusions.
Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in-
fluenced by the historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold',
and might provide a quotation for a tourist's guide to
Spain. The history seems competent, and the artistic
knowledge precocious.
Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:
This was no classic temple order'd round
With massy pillars of the Doric mood
Broad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd,
Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's brood
That battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued,
With golden fillets and rich blazonry,
Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rode
With form divine, a fiery chivalry--
Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony.
The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is dated
Xmas '62. The autograph of this, which is preserved, is
headed by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing,
6 inches in diameter,--a sunset sea-piece with rocks and
formal groups of mermaidens, five or six together, singing
as they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallows
as described
'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c.
This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in-
fluence of Keats, and when I introduced the author to the
public in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it useful
to show that his difficult later style was not due to in-
ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto-
gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint the
extract here:
Soon--as when Summer of his sister Spring
Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling,
And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these'
Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees
His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind
Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind
With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists
Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,
The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,
A glorious wanton;--all the wrecks in showers
Crowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick
With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick
On.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd
Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:
So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock.
* * * * *
But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun;
And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one;
I knew not why,--but know that sadness dwells
On Mermaids--whether that they ring the knells
Of seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main,
As poets sing; or that it is a pain
To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea,
The miles profound of solid green, and be
With loath'd cold fishes, far from man--or what;--
I know the sadness but the cause know not.
Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively
A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea,
Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell,
Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell;
Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung
An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue.
Now melting upward through the sloping scale
Swell'd the sweet strain to a melodious wail;
Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it rose
Slumber'd at last in one sweet, deep, heart-broken close.
_1862-1868_ After the relics of his school-poems follow the
poems written when an undergraduate at Oxford, of which
there are four in this book--Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 52, all
dating about 1866. Of this period some ten or twelve
autograph poems exist, the most successful being religious
verses worked in Geo. Herbert's manner, and these, I think,
have been printed: there are two sonnets in Italian form and
Shakespearian mood (refused by 'Cornhill Magazine'); the
rest are attempts at lyrical poems, mostly sentimental
aspects of death: one of them 'Winter with the Gulf-stream'
was published in 'Once a Week', and reprinted at least in
part in some magazine: the autograph copy is dated Aug. 1871,
but G. M. H. told me that he wrote it when he was at school;
whence I guess that he altered it too much to allow of its
early dating. The following is a specimen of his signature
at this date.
Gerard M. Hopkins.
July 24, 1866.
Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a
handwritten image in the original.
_1868-1875_ After these last-mentioned poems there is a gap of
Silence which may be accounted for in his own words from a
letter to R. W. D. Oct. 5, '78: 'What (verses) I had written
I burnt before I became a Jesuit (i.e. 1868) and re-
solved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession,
unless it were by the wish of my superiors; so for seven
years I wrote nothing but two or three little presentation
pieces which occasion called for. But when in the winter
of '75 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the
Thames and five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany
by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I was
affected by the account and happening to say so to my
rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem
on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though
my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had
haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now
I realised on paper. ... I do not say the idea is altogether
new . . . but no one has professedly used it and made it
the principle throughout, that I know of. ... However
I had to mark the stresses . . . and a great many more
oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye, so that
when I offered it to our magazine _The Month_ . . . they
dared not print it.'
Of the _two or three presentation pieces_ here mentioned
one is certainly the Marian verses 'Rosa mystica', published
in the 'The Irish Monthly', May '98, and again in Orby
Shipley's 'Carmina Mariana', 2nd series, p. 183: the
autograph exists.
Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in
the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five
stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of
Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless
Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally
deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed
to him without some impeachment of his sincerity; and
that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield to
the rather strong presumption which their technical skill
supplies in favour of his authorship. It is true that the
'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man-
ner; but that was probably common to most of these
festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the
positive objections of verbal criticism which would reject
the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copy of either
of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems
(Nos. 18 and 37), nor mentioned them as productions of
his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of
these attempts he met with any appreciation at the time;
it was after the publication of Miles's book in 1894 that
his co-religionists began to recognize his possible merits,
and their enthusiasm has not perhaps been always wise.
It is natural that they should, as some of them openly
state they do, prefer the poems that I am rejecting to
those which I print; but this edition was undertaken in
response to a demand that, both in England and America,
has gradually grown up from the genuinely poetic interest
felt in the poems which I have gradually introduced to the
public:--that interest has been no doubt welcomed and
accompanied by the applause of his particular religious
associates, but since their purpose is alien to mine I regret
that I am unable to indulge it; nor can I put aside the
overruling objection that G. M. H. would not have wished
these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more
serious artistic work. I do not think that they would
please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.
1. ST. DOROTHEA. Written when an exhibitioner at Balliol
College. Contemporary autograph in A, and another
almost identical in H, both undated. Text from A. This
poem was afterwards expanded, shedding its relative pro-
nouns, to 48 lines divided among three speakers, 'an
Angel, the protonotary Theophilus, (and) a Catechumen':
the grace and charm of original lost:--there is an auto-
graph in A and other copies exist. This was the first of
the poems that I saw, and G. M. H. wrote it out for me
(in 1866?).
2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page
with last, in H. Text is from a slightly later autograph
undated in A. The different copies vary.