Produced by Lewis Jones
Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1918) "Poems"
Poems
of
Gerard Manley Hopkins
now first published
Edited with notes
by
Poet Laureate
Transcriber's notes: The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins containunconventional English, accents and horizontal lines. Facsimileimages of the poems as originally published are freely availableonline from the Internet Archive. Please use these images tocheck for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.
The editor's endnotes refer to the page numbers of theAuthor's Preface and to the first page of the Early Poems.I have therefore inserted these page numbers in round brackets:(1), (2), etc. up to (7). For pages 1 to 7 the line numbers inthis electronic version are the same as those referred to in theeditor's endnotes.
After page 7 this text mainly follows the editor's endnoteswhich, apart from the occasional page reference, refer to thepoems by their numbers. For example:
In poem 26 I have retained the larger than normal spacingbetween the first and second words of the eighth line.
In poem 36 I have rendered the first word of line 28 as "Óne."In the original the accent falls on the second letter but I didnot have a text character to record this accurately.
The editor's notes contain one word and, later, one phrase fromthe ancient Greek; these are retained but the Greek letters havebeen Englished.
Author's Preface
Early Poems
Poems 1876-1889
Unfinished Poems & Fragments
Preface to Notes
Notes
OUR generation already is overpast,
And thy lov'd legacy, Gerard, hath lain
Coy in my home; as once thy heart was fain
Of shelter, when God's terror held thee fast
In life's wild wood at Beauty and Sorrow aghast;
Thy sainted sense tramme'd in ghostly pain,
Thy rare ill-broker'd talent in disdain:
Yet love of Christ will win man's love at last.
Hell wars without; but, dear, the while my hands
Gather'd thy book, I heard, this wintry day,
Thy spirit thank me, in his young delight
Stepping again upon the yellow sands.
Go forth: amidst our chaffinch flock display
Thy plumage of far wonder and heavenward flight!
Chilswell, Jan. 1918.
THE poems in this book* (*That is, the MS.described in Editor's preface as B. Thispreface does not apply to the early poems.)are written some in Running Rhythm, the commonrhythm in English use, some in Sprung Rhythm,and some in a mixture of the two. And those inthe common rhythm are some co