The Light of Gerard Manley Hopkins in the Dark Victorian World

By |2023-07-27T22:08:09-05:00July 27th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Literature, Mitchell Kalpakgian, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

In the dark, melancholic, skeptical background of Victorian England, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry presents an image of God as a prolific Creator, loving Father, and consummate Artist who blesses man with abundant gifts of beauty to inspire and uplift the heart and soul. In the Victorian Age, the spirit of the times caused a crisis [...]

Death on Drum: Gerard Manley Hopkins & the Mystery of Suffering

By |2021-02-12T15:38:30-06:00February 12th, 2021|Categories: Death, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Poetry, Senior Contributors|

Prompted to compose his marvelous tour de force, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” after reading the report of a shipwreck off the coast of England, the priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gives one of the most profound and penetrating meditations on the mystery of suffering. The mystery of suffering, or the problem of pain as C.S. Lewis [...]

Romanticism and Reality

By |2017-10-22T11:16:00-05:00October 21st, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poetry|

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur” is far more powerful than William Wordsworth’s pondering and wandering on the banks of the Wye because Hopkins did not turn away from the dark reality… In England for a family celebration, we drove from Herefordshire down the beautiful Wye Valley stopping at the “bare ruined choir” of Tintern [...]

The Presocratic Origins of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

By |2019-09-24T14:26:19-05:00September 19th, 2017|Categories: Beauty, Christianity, Gerard Manley Hopkins, History, Philosophy, Wyoming Catholic College|

To read the Presocratic fragments is to re-enter a world where the simplest natural phenomena, such as boiling water, can set your bones quaking... To read the Presocratic fragments is to re-enter a world where the simplest natural phenomena, such as boiling water, can set your bones quaking. Today it is a cliche that “opposites [...]

The Poetic Vision of Gerard Manley Hopkins

By |2020-07-27T16:38:18-05:00May 27th, 2017|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, Faith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Literature, Poetry|

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a philosopher, and not only a philosopher but a prophet, and not only a prophet but a priest, for he saw the intimate eternal reality of all created things and called us to share the vision and knowledge that the whole world is charged with the grandeur of God. Believing that [...]

Gerard Manley Hopkins & J.R.R. Tolkien on the Devil’s First Sin

By |2023-07-27T22:55:13-05:00September 1st, 2013|Categories: Christianity, Communio, Featured, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Heaven, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stratford Caldecott|Tags: |

The Devil’s first sin was not the temptation of Eve, but preceded the creation of the Garden. He “tried to destroy by violence before he succeeded in ruining by fraud.” You might like to compare Tolkien’s “Ainulindale” (the Elvish account of the creation of the world through music, in The Silmarillion), with the following meditation on the Exercises [...]

Go to Top