In the early spring of 1963, I was a student at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama taking a course in English poetry. The professor was this tall, baby-faced guy in his late twenties, who smoked a pipe and wore tweed and bragged that he had had the honor of almost running over William Faulkner with a pickup truck when he was a student at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. During the first class, he said we were going to study five poets. They would be Dylan Thomas. Thomas Gray, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I remember thinking to myself: ”Who in hell is Gerard Manley Hopkins?” All of the others were household names, but I’d never heard of this last one. The professor said his favorite poem in all of English poetry was a poem written by Hopkins called “The Windhover”. So I went home that night and read the professor’s favorite poem. It goes like this:
The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
At first reading, I thought the work was more of a prayer than a poem. Knowing that Hopkins was an ordained Jesuit priest, I thought it was just a very complicated tribute to Jesus Christ and, after reading it, not being much of a religious man, I wrote it off as Christian propaganda. After discussing it in class the next day, however, I changed my mind and over the succeeding years, like the professor, this poem would become my favorite.
Like most great works of art, I didn’t understand it at first. To truly appreciate great art, it must grow on you. It must become alive inside you and reveal itself and its nuances over and over down through the years.
The first eight lines are absolute genius describing the vision of the bird as it does its thing in the wind. The next three lines are a climax to the bird’s majestic flight and Hopkins likens this to the great beauty and glory of Christ himself.
The words are packed so tightly together, that the reader must pause and reflect on them to collect the total image Hopkins is trying to communicate.
In the poem’s final line, Hopkins says what he is witnessing is not a special wonder, but an everyday occurrence. The majesty and glory of the windhover is as eternal as human existence where human beings will always plow the earth and build fires.
Regarding the plowing image “sheer plow down plod makes sillion shine”….
When I was a small child, I would walk behind my father when he was doing the spring plowing. At the point where the plow cuts into the earth just beneath the surface, it leaves a distinctive cutting point called the “sillion” and, moments after the earth is split open, this point shines with a certain luminescence. I never dreamed I would ever read a poem which so perfectly describes that experience.
Regarding the “and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, fall gall themselves and gash gold vermilion….
The image here refers to the point at which a dying fire, with the dying embers finally burned through to the core, falls into one another ("gall themselves") and sparks fly ("gash gold-vermillion") from the resulting crush of dying embers. Anyone who has every watched a fire die, knows that sensation.
I know of no other poet who has strung together so few words to conjure such powerful images.
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Often, in times of trouble, I find myself, for no particular reason, quoting that line. There is such a comfort in those words. It so beautifully summarizes the nature of the human condition. Religious people quote “The Lord’s Prayer” when their spirit is in need of solace. For some unknown reason, when my soul needs solace, those three lines bubble to the top of my consciousness.
Thank you, Mr. Hopkins!
My hat is off to you!
******
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