Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Version 2)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Read by MichaelMaggs
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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was one of the most innovative of English Victorian poets, best known now for his vivid and original imagery of the natural world in verses such as “The Windhover” and “Pied Beauty”.
Hopkins was a master of miniaturisation and condensation. His poetry is characterised by freshness, concentrated originality and often unconventional syntax in which words may have multiple shades of meaning. One of his most important innovations was what he called “sprung rhythm”, a style intended to be read aloud in which — like natural speech — the stressed syllables ‘spring’ between a variable number of unstressed syllables, and in which the poetic lines are defined not by number of syllables but by number of stresses.
At the age of 24 Hopkins converted to Catholicism and began training as a Jesuit priest. For seven years he wrote no poetry at all, believing that he was not called by God to do so. This period ended with a concentrated explosion of originality with “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, his greatest and longest poem (number 4 in this collection) which is dedicated to the memory of five nuns who lost their lives while attempting the sea passage from Germany to England in 1875. Sometimes considered ‘difficult’ by readers who approach it in printed form, the poem’s outlines become clearer when read aloud. It is divided into two sections, an introductory part in which the poet discourses with wonder on the sudden return of his poetic muse after so many fallow years; and a second part in which he describes with dramatic pace the fate of the ship as it hurtles in the storm and snow to its doom on the Kentish sands. At its heart the poem celebrates, in extraordinarily vivid and imaginative terms, the spiritual vision of a nun whose entire attention is absorbed by Christ even as all around her is chaos and terror.
Most of Hopkins’ poetry was unpublished and completely unknown until nearly 30 years after his death when in 1918 Robert Bridges, his old friend and by then Poet Laureate, brought out this book. Hopkins’ originality was soon recognised, and his verse has had a marked influence on many later poets including TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. (Michael Maggs) (3 hr 8 min)
Chapters
Author's Preface | 11:30 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
For a Picture of St. Dorothea | 1:59 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Heaven—Haven | 0:45 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Habit of Perfection | 2:53 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Wreck of the Deutschland | 22:59 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Penmaen Pool | 2:53 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Silver Jubilee | 1:36 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
God’s Grandeur | 1:29 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Starlight Night | 1:34 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Spring | 1:27 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Lantern out of Doors | 1:30 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Sea and the Skylark | 1:36 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Windhover | 1:44 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Pied Beauty | 1:10 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Hurrahing in Harvest | 1:39 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Caged Skylark | 1:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
In the Valley of the Elwy | 1:30 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Loss of the Eurydice | 8:43 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The May Magnificat | 3:01 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Binsey Poplars | 1:57 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Duns Scotus’s Oxford | 1:45 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Henry Purcell | 2:28 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Peace | 1:24 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Bugler’s First Communion | 4:18 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice | 1:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Andromeda | 1:29 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Candle Indoors | 1:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Handsome Heart | 1:35 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
At the Wedding March | 1:06 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Felix Randal | 1:52 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Brothers | 2:44 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Spring and Fall | 1:16 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves | 2:37 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Inversnaid | 1:26 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame' | 1:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Ribblesdale | 1:27 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo | 5:49 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe | 6:45 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
To what serves Mortal Beauty? | 2:03 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
[The Soldier] | 1:51 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
[Carrion Comfort] | 2:18 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'No worst, there is none' | 1:46 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Tom’s Garland | 2:19 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Harry Ploughman | 2:04 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life' | 1:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day' | 1:44 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray' | 1:41 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'My own heart let me have more have pity on' | 1:31 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection | 3:11 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez | 1:35 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend' | 1:52 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
To R. B. | 1:33 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Summa | 0:32 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'What being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been' | 1:01 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People | 3:17 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'The sea took pity: it interposed with doom' | 0:37 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
[Ash-boughs] | 1:55 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out' | 1:15 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
St. Winefred’s Well | 13:40 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'What shall I do for the land that bred me' | 1:47 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less' | 1:17 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Cheery Beggar | 1:01 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Denis, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit' | 0:46 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'The furl of fresh-leaved dogrose' | 1:25 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
The Woodlark | 2:46 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Moonrise | 1:14 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Repeat that, repeat' | 0:47 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
On a piece of music | 0:23 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'The child is father to the man' | 0:47 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning' | 1:31 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
To his Watch | 1:16 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind' | 0:44 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
Epithalamion | 4:36 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'Thee, God, I come from, to thee go' | 1:37 | Read by MichaelMaggs |
'To him who ever thought with love of me' | 0:48 | Read by MichaelMaggs |