DOCSLIB.ORG

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Oddity and Obscurity

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Oddity and Obscurity PART II Gerard Manley Hopkins: Oddity and Obscurity A version of Clare’s ‘I Am’ appeared in The Spectator in 1865. Hopkins copied it into his notebook. Hopkins’s interest in the poem does not sig- nal that Clare had anything other than a local infuence on Hopkins’s poetry, but it is a token of the two poets’ shared concern with the trib- ulations of personality as a source of creative life.1 Hopkins is among the nineteenth century’s most individual writers about individuality. He expressed his sensitivity to his distinctiveness in language which is in itself distinctive.‘[H]uman nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and dis- tinctive than anything in the world’, must have been created by a being even more individual, he argued in some well-known retreat notes. This truth, says Hopkins, only becomes more evident when I consider my selfbeing, my consciousness and feeling of myself, that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinc- tive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnut leaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man (as when I was a child I used to ask myself: what must it be to be someone else?). Nothing else in nature comes near this unspeakable stress of pitch, distinctive- ness, and selving, this selfbeing of my own: nothing explains it or resembles it, except so far as this, that other men to themselves have the same feeling.2 It is hard to say whether the recognition made in this famous passage is comic or tragic, humanising or isolating. The urgent rhythms of Hopkins’s prose (pitch, distinctiveness, and selving, this selfbeing) strain to conceptu- alise an individuality that remains ‘unspeakable’; they speak of an effort to 112 Part II: GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: ODDITY AND OBSCURITY give voice to personal peculiarity that is at the heart of Hopkins’s artistic endeavour, even as it runs up against the feeling, again fruitful of comedy and tragedy, that such peculiarity may be ‘incommunicable by any means to another man’. ‘[E]very true poet’, Hopkins wrote in a letter of 1878, ‘must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature […] and can never recur’; ‘The effect of stud- ying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise’, he maintained a decade later, with an eye—half rueful, half insistent—on his own ‘singu- larity’.3 Hopkins’s principal aesthetic concern was with ‘inscape’: ‘species, or individually-distinctive beauty of style’, as he explained it to Coventry Patmore.4 Hopkins’s own coinage, the term suggests in itself the creative pressure Hopkins’s singular sense of the world placed on his language. As Stephen Spender puts it, Hopkins was ‘forced by the intensity of his lived experience and the pressure of surrounding life to invent new forms and a highly individual idiom’.5 Intensity of perception is mirrored by individu- ality of style. ‘[P]oetry must have, down to its least separable part, an indi- vidualising touch’, Hopkins told Patmore,6 where ‘touch’ catches fnely Hopkins’s effort to endow poetic language with personal brilliance, but also the countervailing concern to make that individuality felt. Hopkins did not assert his individuality with the same embattled vig- our as Clare did. Where Clare’s effort to ‘create the taste by which he was enjoyed’ warred with cultural stereotype, Hopkins’s anxieties about his ‘right to song’ were often self-directed: though Hopkins’s Catholicism marked him as an outsider, his priesthood meant he was less concerned than Clare to see himself as ‘a poet’—and often actively concerned not to.7 And Hopkins found his voice more suddenly than Clare. What for Clare was a forlorn struggle to be heard on one’s own terms was in Hopkins’s case an abrupt and brilliant realisation of what those terms were: ‘I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I realised on paper’,8 Hopkins wrote to his friend R. W. Dixon in 1878, remembering the composition of The Wreck of the Deutschland two years previously. Hopkins was conscious of the poem’s audacity: he recalled to Dixon that the Catholic journal The Month ‘dared not print it’; and even sympathetic readers were troubled by the force of its originality: Robert Bridges compared the poem to ‘a great dragon folded in the gate to forbid all entrance’ in his 1918 edition of Hopkins’s poems.9 The writ- ing’s audacity and its individualism go in hand. Jill Muller has argued that in itself Hopkins’s ‘decision to join the Church of Rome was an action of self-defnition through dissent’,10 and The Wreck continues that act of Part II: GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: ODDITY AND OBSCURITY 113 self-defnition into the poetic sphere. It stands at the head of Hopkins’s mature output as a poem which announces his distinctiveness as a writer; but that announcement is made not—as in Clare—through a forthright assertion of poetic authority, but rather as an unignorable feature of the language, and through a submission of poetic will to God. In the opening stanzas of The Wreck, Hopkins portrays a loving sur- render which is also the discovery of an authentic voice. The stanzas enact Hopkins’s search for a language which speaks with a depth ‘truer than tongue’ (l. 11); one is let in on the discovery of a voice drawn from the heart of his being. The poem’s rhythms draw us into a turbulent inner life, capturing ‘[t]he swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee [i.e. God] trod / Hárd dówn with a horror of height’ (l. 14–15).11 Hopkins’s alliteration sees the ‘h’ of ‘heart’ dragged through a train of physical buffetings (‘hurl’, ‘Hárd’, ‘horror’, ‘height’) as the momen- tum of the anapaests careers into the bunched emphasis of ‘trod / Hárd down’. But the writing rebounds with an awed sense of the heart’s resil- ience, spiritual rightness, and creative force: The frown of his face Before me, the hurtle of hell Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?— I whirled out wings that spell And fed with a fing of the heart to the heart of the Host.— My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell, Cárrier-wítted, I am bóld to bóast, To fash from the fame to the fame then, tower from the grace to the grace. (l. 17–24) Spiritual and poetic discovery fuse.12 ‘I whirled out wings that spell’ means ‘I sprouted wings for a short time’ but the construction is awk- ward, and you can also hear in the line a claim about the spreading of poetic wings, as Hopkins learns to ‘spell’ out a sense of his unique self- hood. What is remarkable about Hopkins’s voice is the way its peculiar uniqueness seems so spontaneously achieved. The impression of ‘truth- fulness’ depends upon rhythms which sustain close contact with the heart’s seemingly spontaneous and self-motivated energy. To speak of ‘a fing of the heart’ leaves it uncertain whether it is Hopkins or his heart that is responsible for the ‘finging’: yes, it was ‘My heart’ that ‘fed’ 114 Part II: GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: ODDITY AND OBSCURITY to fnd God under such pressure, Hopkins says wonderingly, but it was ‘dovewinged’, ‘Cárrier-wítted’, apparently under the command of some- thing other than conscious will; and the movement of the verse, fuelled by its currents of alliteration and internal rhyme, seeks harmony with this inner life. Hopkins speaks with a seeming impulsiveness which accords with the way the heart, as Hopkins wondered in a later, more serene poem: To its own fne function, wild and self-instressed Falls as light as, life-long, schooled to what and why. (‘The Handsome Heart’, l. 7–8) Again Hopkins marvels at the way individual character manifests itself innately, admiring a ‘wildness’ that doesn’t go awry; and the workings of the verse exhibit the same ‘self-instressed’ qualities, their rhythms springing off an iambic norm at ‘own fne function’ and singing with tro- chaic buoyancy in the second line. The voice, in both instances, owes its ‘truthfulness’ to an exemplary marriage of craft and spontaneity; it seems to discover itself as it goes, as though, in James Milroy’s words, it had ‘its own selfhood’.13 Hopkins speaks, it might be said, with his heart in his mouth. He wrote energetically about ‘human ^spoken^ utterance’ as ‘the natural performance and delivery belonging properly to lyric poetry’ (the dele- tion suggests Hopkins’s sense of the intimacy of ‘human’ character and voice). ‘[T]ill [poetry] is spoken it does not perform, is not itself’, he explained to his brother Everard. ‘Sprung rhythm’, in emphasising the spoken accents latent on the page, ‘gives back to poetry its true soul and self’,14 he argued; and the energy and intricacy of Hopkins’s rhythms ensure their precise responsiveness to his own ‘true soul and self’. ‘[T]o presume to have captured in poetry the native character of spoken rhythm is to presume to have captured at least some of the native char- acter of its speaker’, as Joshua King has said.15 Hopkins’s rhythms aim for ‘an emphasis as much brighter, livelier, more lustrous than the regu- lar but commonplace emphasis of common rhythm as poetry in general is brighter than prose ^common^ speech’.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins and Old English Poetry: a Stylistic Analysis
    Gerard Manley Hopkins and Old English poetry: a stylistic analysis Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Li, Leshi Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 14:04:44 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565498 GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY: A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS by Rebecca Lee A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN ENGLISH LITERATURE . In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 8 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Rebecca Lee_________________________________ entitled GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY:___________________ A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. * / ■ ? ■ / Dissertation Director Date / STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library» Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission5 provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made.
    [Show full text]
  • Hard Patience by MELINDA CREECH
    Copyright © 2016 Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University 67 Hard Patience BY MELINDA CREECH In one of his so-called “terrible sonnets” or “sonnets of desolation,” Gerard Manley Hopkins confronts how very hard it is to ask for patience and to see the world from God’s perspective. Yet patience draws us ever closer to God and to his “delicious kindness.” uring his Long Retreat of November-December 1881-1882, Gerard Manley Hopkins copied into his spiritual writings notebook this Deighth “Rule for the Discernment of Spirits” from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola: “Let him who is in desolation strive to remain in patience, which is the virtue contrary to the troubles which harass him; and let him think that he will shortly be consoled, making diligent effort against the desolation.”1 Patience was to become a focus for Hopkins during the last eight years of his life, strained slowly out of the experiences of life and distilled from his attentive study of creation, other people, and spiritual writings. As Ignatius counseled, it was to be patience in the midst of desola- tion, and Hopkins knew a fair bit of desolation in his short forty-four years. Growing up in a well-to-do religiously pious Anglican family, Hopkins excelled at Highgate School, London, and attended Balliol College, Oxford, receiving highest honors in both his final exams, Greats and Moderns. He converted to Catholicism during his last year at Balliol and later he entered the Jesuit order. During these early years he struggled with conflicts he per- ceived between his identities as priest, professor, and poet.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT Hopkins's Homer: a Scholarly Edition of Gerard Manley
    ABSTRACT Hopkins’s Homer: A Scholarly Edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Dublin Notes on the Iliad Melinda Creech, Ph.D. Mentor: Joshua King, Ph.D. In a letter to his mother (13 January 1886), Gerard Manley Hopkins mentioned that he was “taking notes for one [a book] on Homer’s art.”(CW II 757). These notes on the Iliad, made while Hopkins was living in Dublin, on sixty-five pages of folded sheets of paper, are housed at Campion Hall, Oxford. In the Campion Hall manuscript, Hopkins makes this final statement: “After this I am going to make my notes mainly on my interleaved book. Feb. 12 ’86.” Those additional fifteen pages, interleaved into his copy of Homeri Ilias (1883), are housed at the Foley Library, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington. Taken together, the two sets of notes, consisting of 514 items and pertaining to fifty- seven pages in his edition of the Iliad, were written between November 1884 and ca. February 1886. A transcription of Hopkins’s notes, those housed at Campion Hall, and those housed at Gonzaga University, and a commentary on those notes comprises the bulk of the dissertation. These Dublin Notes on the Iliad, written by Hopkins during one of the darkest times of his life, when he was estranged from his country, his family, and his beloved Wales, provide a unique insight into the way he regarded the art of Homer’s poetry—the way Homer ordered the words, phrases, and lines that contributed to that poetry; the way that “stock” epithets were not stock at all, but expressed nuanced characteristics of the things and people they modified; the value Homer placed on the inscape of words, fitting each word into its place in the lines of dactylic hexameter—and the way Hopkins reflected his study of Homer in his own poetry, particularly the poetry he wrote and revised while living in Ireland.
    [Show full text]
  • Hard Patience
    Hard Patience In one of his so-called “terrible sonnets,” Gerard Manley Hopkins confronts how very hard it is to ask for patience and to see the world from God’s perspective. Yet patience draws us ever closer to God and to his “delicious kindness.” Prayer Christian Reflection Scripture Reading: Romans 5:3-5 A Series in Faith and Ethics Meditation Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray, But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks Wants war, wants wounds; weary his time, his tasks; To do without, take tosses, and obey. Focus Article: Rare patience roots in these, and, these away, Hard Patience Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy Patience masks (Attentive Patience, Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks pp. 67-75) Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day. Suggested Article: We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills The Difficulty and Beauty To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills of Patience Of us we do bid God bend to him even so. (Attentive Patience, And where is he who more and more distils pp. 76-79) Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Reflection For many of us, the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to “glory in tribula- tions also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience” (Romans 5:3, KJV) is difficult to understand and even harder to embrace. We know too many people who, when confronted with suffering, succumbed to sadness, anger, and despair. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins “experienced his share of tribula- What do you think? tions near the end of his life” and struggled with the spiritual dangers they invited, Melinda Creech writes.
    [Show full text]
  • Of Gerard Manley Hopkins
    POEMS , of Gerard Manley Hopkins The First Edition with Preface and Notes by , . ROBERT BRIDGES Edited with additional Poems, Notes, and a Biographical Introduction by w. H . GARDNER Third Edition OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New fork and London ~ ~~~k~ ~ bL~ ~~~ ""--t4 .-~ t Iu:. ~~ ~IG~ COPYRIGHT 1948 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC. THE POEMS OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS were first published in England, edited with notes by Robert Bridges, in 1918; a second edition with an Appendix ofAdditional Poems and a Critical Introduction by Charles Williams, was published in November 1930. Third English Edition, First American Edition, 1948 • PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION xiii DEDICATION OF THE FIRST EDITION . 3 AUTHOR'S PREFACE (WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES AND EXAMPLES BY THE EDITOR) 5 EARLY POEMS (1860-75?) I. The Escorial 13 2 . A Vision of the Mermaids 18 3. Winter with the Gulf Stream 23 4. Spring and Death 24 S. A Soliloquy of One of the Spies left in the Wilderness 25 6. New Readings 28 7. 'He hath abolished the old drouth,' 28 8. 'Where art thou friend, whom I shall never see,' 29 9. Three Sonnets: The Beginning of the End 30 10. The Alchemist in the City 3 I II. 'Myself unholy, from myself unholy' 33 12. Two Sonnets: To Oxford 33 13. Easter Communion 35 14. 'See how Spring opens with disabling cold,' 35 IS. 'My prayers must meet a brazen heaven' 36 16. 'Let me be to Thee as the circling bird' 37 17. The Half-way House 37 18.
    [Show full text]
  • "Terrible Sonnets" and Performative Bodies: Approaching the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
    "Terrible Sonnets" and Performative Bodies: Approaching the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins Adam A. Ferguson C-00562780 Thesis Supervisor: Karla Alwes, Ph.D. Secondary Reader: Emmanuel S. Nelson, Ph.D. Submission Date: 12 March, 2012 This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts (MA) Degree in English at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. 2 I did say yes O at lightning and láshed ród; Thou heardst me, truer than tongue, confess Thy terror, O Christ, O God; Thou knówest the walls, altar, and hour and night: The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod Hárd dówn with a horror of height: And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress. --"The Wreck of the Deutschland," Stanza 2 (1875) 1.0 Introduction: Biographical and Historical Perspectives The works of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) serve as one of the clear bridges between "Victorian" poetry, which was perfectly rhymed and metered, and Modernist poetry, which sought to break down the restrictive traditions established in years prior.1 In fact, his use of "sprung rhythm," cited in the extract above, is one of the most salient ruptures from the past. This thesis explores how Hopkins' use of metaphor and imagery can be used to deploy a specifically queer theoretical reading—particularly given Hopkins' own sexuality, together with his repression of the same. There are two prevailing schools of Hopkins criticism: the religious school, which examines the poetry from the perspective of the sacramental and the Ignatian2; and the secular school, which approaches his poetry from the viewpoint of the homoerotic, if not overtly homosexual.
    [Show full text]
  • Vision and Risk in the Work of Gerard Manley Hopkins
    ‘THE NAKED EYE’: VISION AND RISK IN THE WORK OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS HANNAH VICTORIA DUNLEAVY PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE DECEMBER 2009 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ii Acknowledgements iii Declaration iv Abstract v Abbreviations vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE : LOOKING AT PAINTINGS 18 i … The irises of the present writer’s eyes … 23 ii … the bewildering wealth of beautiful things … ...................................................... 28 iii … Bows of the eyelids. Pencil of eyelashes … ....................................................... 34 iv … it is worth your while to see … ........................................................................... 44 v … branchy between towers … .................................................................................. 52 CHAPTER TWO : LOOKING AT PEOPLE 67 i … treasury of explored beauty … ............................................................................. 68 ii … To what serves Mortal Beauty? ... ....................................................................... 77 iii … The making and the melting crowds … .............................................................. 88 iv … a stirring scene … ............................................................................................. 102 v … my dúty all énded ... ........................................................................................... 110 CHAPTER THREE : PEOPLE LOOKING 122 i… more than one observer, in the sky … ...............................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Contemporary Voice Revisits the Past: Seamus Heaney's Beowulf
    Estudios Irlandeses , Number 2, 2007, pp. 57-67 __________________________________________________________________________________________ AEDEI A Contemporary Voice Revisits the Past: Seamus Heaney's Beowulf By Silvia Geremia Pavia University, Italy Copyright (c) 2007 by Silvia Geremia. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged for access. Abstract. Heaney’s controversial translation of Beowulf shows characteristics that make it look like an original work: in particular, the presence of Hiberno-English words and some unexpected structural features such as the use of italics, notes and running titles. Some of Heaney’s artistic choices have been brought into question by the Germanic philologists, who reproached him with his lack of fidelity to the original text. Moreover, the insertion of Hiberno-English words, which cause an effect of estrangement on Standard English speakers, was considered by some critics not only an aesthetic choice but a provocative act, a linguistic and political claim recalling the ancient antagonism between the Irish and the English. Yet, from the point of view of Heaney’s theoretical and cultural background, his innovations in his translation of Beowulf appear consistent with his personal notions of poetry and translation. Therefore, his Beowulf can be considered the result of a necessary interaction between translator and original text and be acclaimed in spite of all the criticism. Key Words. Translation, ‘self’, ‘other’, Hiberno-English, ‘further language’, (act of/process of) ‘appropriation’, Scullionspeak. Resumen. La controvertida traducción de Beowulf de Heaney posee características que la hacen parecer una obra original: en particular, la presencia de palabras en hiberno-inglés y algunos elementos estructurales inesperados como el empleo de la letra cursiva, de notas y de títulos en el poema.
    [Show full text]
  • 0309 Lou.Stu. 03 Ballinger
    Louvain Studies 22 (1997) 153-180 Created to Praise: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ignatius of Loyola Philip Ballinger In the realm of aesthetic expression, few explicitly Catholic artists have captured the consciousness of the modern age as has Gerard Man- ley Hopkins. Dying in relative obscurity in 1889, his poetry was not published until 1917. Even then, it did not gain wide recognition until after 1930. Thus, an oft misunderstood and ill-appreciated artist in his own time, Hopkins became, anachronistically, the celebrated poet of modernity in the twentieth century. Since 1930, hundreds of articles have been written about Hopkins' influence and meaning by scholars from diverse academic domains. Though his work is claimed and mined by critics and admirers from areas as varied as English literature, theol- ogy, ethics, aesthetics, and social history, one contentious question is certainly in the midst of the field – how and to what degree was Hop- kins influenced in his thought and poetry by Ignatius of Loyola and the Spiritual Exercises? This article intends to present and critique the main lines of thought on this central question in Hopkins studies. The author additionally hopes to present an alternate and new point of view on this touchstone issue in Hopkinsian criticism. Poet vs. Priest Poet and priest – in the history of Hopkins literary criticism, these vocations have been seen both in union and in conflict. Certainly, the early disparagement and even negation of the Jesuit influence on Hop- kins' poetry erupted in part because of the overt anti-Catholicism pre- sent in Victorian England.1 Nonetheless, one still finds lament over 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Helen Levine Berkowitz
    University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Master's Theses Student Research 4-1-1960 Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Helen Levine Berkowitz Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses Recommended Citation Berkowitz, Helen Levine, "Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)" (1960). Master's Theses. Paper 154. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Preaent@d 1n ~art1al. Fulfilli:cnt ot tho ltequiromenta tor tho Dogree Huter ot .Arta in tho Gr&dua.te School ot tba Un1voro1ty ot Richmond. Tho Un1vors1ty ct Rlohmond LIBRARY UNJVER"s1~ - ' 'Y OF RrcHMOND VI :xG! i'J if\ Apgrowd tor tho Dopartmcnt ot English NW the Graduatt!I Sohool b)' Proteooor of &lgl13h and Direotor ot The41n Table of Contents Chapter Biographioa.l Sketch l Publication 14 Sprung Rhythm 20 lnsoapo and Instress 37 His .Poe try 42 His Influence on Modern Poetry 78 Evaluation 96 Bibliography Vita All things thorct'ore aro ohargeii with lovo11 nre charged w1 th God a..'ld it \"tfJ lawu how to touch thma give oft spo.rks e.nd take ~ire, yield dropo nnd flow. ring o..~d toll or h1o. 1 1Htmphry BoU!Ht, od., The NotB•Book:J end Pn::>or:l of Gotnrd l!anloz llot)idn:; ~London, 1 :;;37 );?. 'j4~. , tieron?ter roforroct 4.:o ae t1o~o-~oo%:3e) Chapter I Biographical.
    [Show full text]
  • Athena Rare Books Modern Poetry
    ATHENA RARE BOOKS Catalog 20 Erato, the Muse of Poetry M ODERN P OETRY DICKENSON A Masque of Poets HOPKINS Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins YEATS Michael Robartes and the Dancer FROST Mountain Interval ELIOT Prufrock and Other Observations The Waste Land Animula Sweeney Agonisges The Four Quartets What is a Classic? MILLAY Renasence The King’s Henchman The Buck in the Snow Fatal Interview Wine from These Grapes Conversations at Midnight Make Bright the Arrows The Murder of Lidice Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Mine the Harvest PLATH Light Blue, Dark Blue Poetry at the Mermaid The London Magazine American Poetry Now Encounter Ariel Crossing the Water Winter Trees The Bell Jar Letters Home The Magic Mirror WRIGHT To a Blossoming Pear Tree EMILY DICKENSON (1830-1886) Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed A Masque of Poets. Including Guy Vernon, A Novelette in Verse, [Edited by George Parsons Lathrop], Robert Brothers, Boston, 1878. 1 blank leaf + TP + [5]-8 = Contents + [9]- [303], small Octavo. First Edition. $ 1,000 The only publication of one of her poems in book form during her lifetime. “Success” is the final poem to appear in the book – on page 174 without attribution (as do all of the poems in this book). Success Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a Nectar Requires the sorest need. Not one of all the Purple Host Who took the flag to-day, Can tell the definition, So plain, of Victory, As he defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break, agonizing clear.
    [Show full text]
  • Anglo-Saxonism in Nineteenth-Century Poetry Abstract
    Anglo-Saxonism in Nineteenth-Century Poetry Abstract: This article essays the first survey of nineteenth-century poetry that imitates, alludes to, or draws on, theories about Anglo-Saxon language and/or literature. Criticism has so far overlooked such a field as forming a distinct body of literature with shared preoccupations and influences, although some previous attention has been paid to the Anglo-Saxonism of individual poets or texts. This essay, then, provides the first scoping exercise of the extent and limits of a field one could term nineteenth-century Anglo- Saxonist poetry. This corpus is briefly contextualized within the wider field of Anglo- Saxonist literature, itself an important sub-genre of medievalism and medievalist literature. A possible fourfold typology is offered as a framework within which further study might be continued. Some consideration is briefly paid to the use of Anglo-Saxon in the poetry of William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Alfred Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, William Barnes, William Morris, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The importance of antiquarianism and philology is emphasized, with passing reference made to writers such as Sharon Turner, George Marsh, and to the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The essay addresses a neglected topic in the broader field of the reception of the Middle Ages, and in particular the recovery and reception of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English language and poetry. The essay concludes by suggesting that new narrative models of literary history made be required to accommodate the concept of
    [Show full text]