Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poems

1. Characterize Hopkins’s view of nature. Be specific, citing the poetry. How does his view of nature compare to Darwin’s?
2. Both “God’s Grandeur” and “Binsey Poplars” comment on the fate of nature in the Victorian period. How so?
3. In “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” the speaker says “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same.” What is that “one thing”? Is that true also of the “just man”?
4. In “The Windhover,” the speaker notes that “sheer plod makes plough down sillion / Shine.” What does this marvelous line mean? How does it fit the other images used in the poem?
5. Why is “The Windhover” a poem dedicated/addressed to “Christ our Lord”?
6. What is interesting or usual about Hopkins writing a poem about “pied” beauty?
7. “Carrion Comfort,” “No Worst, There is None,” “I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day,” and “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord” are among Hopkins’s “terrible sonnets,” poems expressing, as the Norton editors note, his fear that his “distinctive individuality” implies solipsism and hence isolation from God. Explain exactly how each of these poems enacts this fear. Do any of them resolve it?