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Hopkins aged 15 Hopkins as a Jesuit Priest

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

His Life through his Poetry

A Transcript of the Proposed Downloads and CD with Free Audio Excerpts

   TRACK 7: Instress

In the variety of shape and colour presented by birds, flowers, hills, clouds and trees, Hopkins discerns a deeper, hidden, God-given pattern - for which he coins the name " inscape "; and the sensation of inscape, its energy he calls " stress " or "instress".

While studying medieval philosophy Hopkins discovered the writings of Duns Scotus, who was born in Scotland and who taught in Oxford and in Paris.  That subtle thinker's insight into the immanence of God in landscape and sensuous beauty, confirmed for Hopkins his own theory of God's inscape and instress in nature and in people.  He wrote: 'I was flush with a new stroke of enthusiasm.  It may come to nothing or it may be a mercy from God'. 

    Duns Scotus's Oxford

TOWERY city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-
     racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and
     town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.

The next track: On a Piece of Music

Introduction to this Hopkins Feature

Gerard Manley Hopkins Workshop

Home Page

We recommend the Oxford Edition and in particular Sean Street's account of The Wreck of the Deutschland, which he was inspired to write from hearing my production of Paul Scofield's reading for BBC Radio 3.  We also highly recommend Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Study of Poetic Idiosyncrasy in Relation to Poetic Tradition by Professor Helen Gardner: