Study Questions
1. Hopkins’s sonnets typically
shift from a personal, often sensual experience rooted in the physical
world to moral, philosophical, and theological reflections. Discuss
this movement in relation to several poems.
The poetic shift from the world of experience
to more abstract considerations reflects the way Hopkins believed
all experiences to harken back eventually to the metaphysical, to
God the creator. He believed that the world of nature (and even
the man-made aspects of the experienced world) were all part of
God’s creative expression, and that the spirit of God was infused
in his creation. “God’s
Grandeur” suggests that the energy of God runs through
all things, sometimes welling up to an excess and revealing itself
in bursts of brilliance or goodness. For Hopkins, because God infused
all the world, the world was a means of access to spiritual truth, a
way of getting in touch with God and his will and design. The transition
in a poem such as “The
Windhover” from the contemplation of a bird to the
contemplation of God was therefore a very natural one for Hopkins,
and one very deeply rooted in his religious beliefs. The Italian
sonnet form is perfectly suited for this kind of poetic argument
because it incorporates a turn of tone between the first and second
parts.
2. Trace some images of science and technology
in Hopkins’s poems. How did he reconcile scientific understanding
with religious belief?
In “God’s
Grandeur,” Hopkins uses electricity as a metaphor for
God’s power and presence in the world. The poem does not explicitly
mention lightning, but lightning was one of the poet’s favorite
images, and it is certainly suggested in the image of a charge that
“will flame out” after “gather[ing] to a greatness.” Electricity was
a focus of much research by scientists of Hopkins’s day, and lightning
is a good example of a phenomenon that had traditionally been seen
as a direct act of God. (Even the Greeks had attributed lightning
bolts to the hand of Zeus.) As science began to propose physical
explanations for lightning, many people considered such hypotheses
a threat to religion and a denial of the existence of God. Hopkins
was keenly aware of these sorts of debates, and he engages them
at some level by choosing such provocative images for his profoundly
religious poetry; yet he does not ponder long over the conflict,
but rather swiftly (and summarily?) resolves it. He takes the patterns
found in nature, and in the world’s various objects, as testimony
to God’s hand in creating an orderly universe.
3. Why do you think the method of “sprung
rhythm” appealed to Hopkins? How does it contribute to his poems?
4. How does Hopkins think and write about his religious
vocation, and how does that relate to his sense of his work as a
poet? What other kinds of work or trades appear in Hopkins’s poem,
and what does his attitude seem to be toward physical labor?
5. Think about some of the images that recur in Hopkins’s
poems, and discuss why they are appropriate to the themes that most
concerned him as a poet.
6. Are Hopkins’s poems at all political? Do they make
any attempt to come to terms with questions of history or nation?
If so, where and how?
7. Hopkins is famous as a poet of both nature and religion.
How does he combine these two traditional poetic subjects, and to
what effect?
8. What does Hopkins believe about the presence of God
in the natural world? Illustrate your answer with reference to two
or more poems.
9. Does Hopkins’s poetry more closely resemble Romantic
or Modernist poetry? Explain your answer.
10. Hopkins often said that he wanted his poetic language
to be true to living speech. In what ways do his unusual diction
and his “sprung rhythm” succeed or fail in this capacity?
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