Gerard Manley Hopkins: Man

“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

“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

“Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Carrion Comfort http://www.bartleby.com/122/40.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Hope , Cry , Despair

“I consider my selfbeing … that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

“Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"Spring and Fall", lines 12-15
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Heart

“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"God's Grandeur", lines 5-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Feeling

“I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"No Worst, There Is None", lines 9 -15
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Life , Death , Mountain , Sleep

“Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Felix Randal http://www.bartleby.com/122/29.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Time , Dead