Gerard Manley Hopkins: Trending quotes

“Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" The Wreck of the Deutschland http://www.bartleby.com/122/4.html", lines 1-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

Feeling

“Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland

"The Wreck of the Deutschland", lines 115-118
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Hope , Tear

“Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the same.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland

"The Wreck of the Deutschland", line 160
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

“Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo: The Golden Echo, line 19
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God , Beauty

“I thought how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere again.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Journal (19 July 1872)
Letters, etc

People , Beauty

“I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Heart

“The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened, to any degree heightened and unlike itself, but not…an obsolete one.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Robert Bridges (14 August 1879)
Letters, etc

Age

“I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Robert Bridges (18 October 1882)
Letters, etc
Context: I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.

Heart

“Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Pied Beauty http://www.bartleby.com/122/13.html", lines 1-3
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God

“You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing, interest ceases also…”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Robert Bridges (24 October 1883)
Letters, etc
Context: You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing, interest ceases also... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.

“I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Heaven-Haven http://www.bartleby.com/122/2.html", lines 1-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Spring

“I say more, the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" (undated poem, c. March - April 1877)

Love , Men , God , Justice

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Spring http://www.bartleby.com/122/9.html", stanza 1
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.

Love , Beauty , Spring

“Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" The Starlight Night http://www.bartleby.com/122/8.html" (1877), lines 1-3
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Star

“Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The Habit of Perfection", lines 5 - 8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Love

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Inversnaid http://www.bartleby.com/122/33.html, lines 13-16
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Complete Poems

World

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" God's Grandeur http://www.bartleby.com/122/7.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God , World

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The Habit of Perfection", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Music , Silence , Singing

“What I do is me: for that I came.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" http://www.embodiment-of-freedom.com/persfree/hopkins.html (undated poem, c. March - April 1877) - Analysis and information regarding this poem at the Gerard Manley Hopkins Society http://www.gerardmanleyhopkins.org/lectures_2004/As_Kingfishers_analysis.html