Birds
Birds appear throughout Hopkins’s poetry, frequently as
stand-ins for God and Christ. In “The Windhover,” a poem dedicated
to Christ, the speaker watches a falcon flying through the sky and
finds traces of Christ in its flight path. The beauty of the bird
causes the speaker to reflect on the beauty of Christ because the
speaker sees a divine imprint on all living things. Similarly, “As
Kingfishers Catch Fire” meditates on the innate behaviors and patterns
of beings in the universe: the inscape of birds manifests in their
flights, much as the inscape of stone manifests in the sound of
flowing water. Christ appears everywhere in these inscape manifestations.
In Christian iconography, birds serve as reminders that there is
life away from earth, in heaven—and the Holy Ghost is often represented
as a dove. “God’s Grandeur” portrays the Holy Ghost literally, as
a bird big enough to brood over the entire world, protecting all
its inhabitants.
Fire
Hopkins uses images of fire to symbolize the passion behind
religious feeling, as well as to symbolize God and Christ. In “God’s
Grandeur,” Hopkins compares the glory of God and the beautiful bounty
of his world to fire, a miraculous presence that warms and beguiles
those nearby. He links fire and Christ in “The Windhover,” as the
speaker sees a flame burst at the exact moment in which he realizes
that the falcon contains Christ. Likewise, “As Kingfishers Catch
Fire” uses the phrase “catch fire” as a metaphor for the birds’
manifestation of the divine imprint, or inscape, in their natural
behavior. In that poem too, the dragonflies “draw flame” (1),
or create light, to show their distinct identities as living things.
Nature’s fire—lightning—appears in other poems as a way of demonstrating
the innate signs of God and Christ in the natural world: God and Christ
appear throughout nature, regardless of whether humans are there
to witness their appearances.
Trees
Trees appear in Hopkins’s poems to dramatize the earthly
effects of time and to show the detrimental effects of humans on
nature. In “Spring and Fall,” the changing seasons become a metaphor
for maturation, aging, and the life cycle, as the speaker explains
death to a young girl: all mortal things die, just as all deciduous
trees lose their leaves. In “Binsey Poplars,” the speaker mourns
the loss of a forest from human destruction, then urges readers
to be mindful of damaging the natural world. Cutting down a tree
becomes a metaphor for the larger destruction being enacted by nineteenth-century
urbanization and industrialization. Trees help make an area more
beautiful, but they do not manifest God or Christ in the same way
as animate objects, such as animals or humans.
