Gerard Manley Hopkins

Seeing Easter in a Sonnet

What is the sound we hear that alone may dispel the darkness, vanquishing beneath its wings the dangers that assail us? Nothing less than the Third Person of the Trinity.

Hopkins, Autumn, and Christ

A young child, Margaret, grieves for the time-swept autumn leaves. She is the object of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Spring and Fall,” and her bright Goldengrove is now “unleaving.” Goldengrove, with all its connotations of idyllic youth and sunny play. Goldengrove, where we imagine little Margaret exulting, with Chestertonian wonder, in the gratuitous magic of … Read more

The Singular Catholic Vision of Gerard Manley Hopkins

If every poem has a past, then the strands of my own past are laced with lines of the loveliest lyric, forged a century or more ago by Gerard Manley Hopkins, an obscure Jesuit priest whose sonnet, “God’s Grandeur,” I elatedly discovered while a student at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. His was the opening … Read more

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad out its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same; Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself … Read more

The World Beyond the Wardrobe

On the day C.S. Lewis died—November 22, 1963—the world was hardly in a position to take notice.  The assassination of an American President, after all, had clearly and shockingly co-opted everything that day, including even the ending of a life unsurpassed for its sheer breath catching lucidity in defense of ordinary Christian belief.  But history, … Read more

When Those We Love Die

In thinking about the destiny of those who die, the course of their final trajectory beyond the grave, it is always unwise to make predictions about the precise place awaiting them on the other side.  How can anyone, in the absence of a sudden sunburst from above, possibly know?  Unless one were fully omniscient—which is … Read more

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Windhover”

As liturgical time draws to an end, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King.  At this moment it is worth remembering one of the finest English efforts at honoring the glory, majesty, sovereignty, authority, liberality, and magnanimity of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—“The Windhover: to Christ our Lord” by … Read more

What the Lord’s Ascension Means

Of all the conundrums that have come to vex and confound us, there are three that continue uniquely to rivet the attention.  Each provides a key to the great and enduring realities of the Christian life.  What can we know (Faith)?  What ought we to do (Charity)?  And, finally, in whom may we trust (Hope)?  … Read more

Why We Write

It seems somebody one day had the bright idea of asking Samuel Johnson whether he wrote for money. It’s easy to imagine that great man of letters and lexicographer of the late 18th century puffing up like an angry blowfish as he replied, “Sir, anyone who writes for anything except money is a fool.”   … Read more

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