Selected Sonnets and Other Lyrics by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The use of half lines in caudate and curtal sonnets, possibly suggested to Hopkins their addition to standard sonnet form in the poem Harry Ploughman . Three of these ‘burden’ lines, as Hopkins calls them (an expression meaning the refrain line of a song or ballad), fall in the octet, and two in the sestet. They all rhyme with the preceding line.

God’s Grandeur

GLOSSARY
‘oil’ – probably olive oil, widely used in religious ceremonies and anointings.

‘reck’ – take notice of.

‘rod’ – instrument of command and of discipline. The Psalms prophesy that the messiah will rule the nations with an ‘iron rod.’ The word also suggests ‘rood’ (‘rode’ in Old English), which means ‘cross.’

‘seared’ – contemporary meaning is the same as ‘scorched,’ but Hopkins may be using the archaic meaning of ‘withered.’

‘bleared’ – blurred.

‘being shod’ – wearing shoes or boots.

THOUGHTS
Behind this poem is the Jesuit ideal of finding God in all things. Hopkins, though, sees mankind’s impact on the natural world as something defiling and degrading. The divinity that dwells within nature, however, can never be entirely overcome by negative human actions.

Divinity, as so often in Hopkins, is seen as energy and life-force. Here it ‘charges’ the world like static electricity charges a metal globe until ‘shinings’ ‘flame out’ at moments of exceptional ‘charge’. This idea of sudden, ‘electrical’ moments of revelation is frequent in Hopkins. It is in these moments that we perceive the ‘grandeur of God’ which is so often hidden and obscured. It’s always there, according to Hopkins, but is only revealed at moments of ‘stress.’