A Good Jesuit....Gerard Manley Hopkins

On 28th July 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins arrived upon earth.

As a young priest he lived and worked in North Wales for a time and, being a fluent Welsh speaker, translated several major works of the Welsh language into English.

He also wrote, copiously, poetry; some like it, some do not.

I believe that GMH formed the main part of Dylan Thomas's poetical inspiration, 100 or so years later.

Here is another famous Welshman reading 'The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo' by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Maiden's Song from the Welsh Lourdes, St Winefride's Well.

                           

  The Leaden Echo

HOW to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there ’s none, there ’s none, O no there ’s none,	5
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay	10
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there ’s none; no no no there ’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,	15
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
The Golden Echo
Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,	20
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Oné. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that ’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet	25
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets móre, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,	30
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.	35
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold	40
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder	45
A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—
Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder. Richard Collins - Linen on the Hedgerow

Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ - Died 8th June 1889

The Catholic litany of famous converts seems never ending and Father Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ must appear close to the top, certainly of any nineteenth century version of such a list.

Born in the East End of London of a wealthy father, Gerard was the eldest of eight children. The family were strong High Church Anglicans and steeped in literature and the arts.

He soon developed an interest in art and painting in particular (his Great Uncle was the famous artist, Richard James Lane).

 And it seemed that his nephew was also destined for a career in the arts. When the family moved to the more salubrious surroundings of Hampstead Heath, the ten year old Gerard found inspiration in Keats poetry and developed a precocious talent for prose.

At Balliol College, Oxford, (1863-67) he studied classics and formed a friendship with Robert Bridges, a fellow poet who, in fact, was destined to become Poet Laureate.  By the summer of 1866 he had made up his mind to convert to Catholicism and travelled to Birmingham to consult the man who had travelled the road to Rome very famously before him, Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman.

"Glory be to God for dappled things...."

Things moved on apace and Gerard was received by the Cardinal,into the Church on 21^st October 1866; within eighteen months he had resolved to enter the priesthood and, as a sign of commitment, gave up writing poetry and made a bonfire of all his poetical works, resigning himself to a life in imitation of Christ.

However, after a short period he reconciled his creative talent and resumed writing verse. He studied at St Beuno’s College in North Wales and so began his fascination with the Welsh language (he had already formed an affinity for Old English, a close relation to the Welsh). The repetitive sounds of Welsh were, it is believed, a major influence on the alliterative and onomatopoeic distinctive style that he developed in his main works.

Ordained into the Jesuit Order in 1877 he began a series of appointments, teaching first in Chesterfield, moving to Mount Street, London as a curate before accepting similar posts in Oxford, Manchester, Sheffield, Stoneyhurst in Lancashire and, finally, University College, Dublin.

Never blessed with a strong constitution, Dublin and its heavy workload began to have a bad effect on his health and by 1889 he had contracted typhoid fever and died. His last words were: “I am so happy, I am so happy, I loved my life”.

There is some speculation that his mood swings throughout his brief life were as a result of depression, what is termed today, Bipolar Disorder.

He died 8^th June 1889 and is buried at Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery.



The Kestrel, country name....Windhover





The Windhover

                                                 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: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
      Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Is it my imagination or is there an element that could be found in any of the poems of Dylan Thomas here?


Posted by Richard Collins - Linen on the Hedgerow