By Dr Oliver Tearle This is one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s so-called ‘Terrible Sonnets’, composed in the 1880s while he was living in Ireland and plunged in depression. The poem beautifully captures Hopkins’s trademark ‘eloquent inarticulacy’ and is one of the most powerful descriptions of a sleepless night in all […]
A summary of ‘Moonrise’, a lesser-known poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘Moonrise’ is subtitled ‘June 19 1876’. It’s not one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s best-known poems, and may have been left in fragment form; alternatively, it can be read as a short complete poem. We’re not sure what Hopkins himself […]
An introduction to ‘God’s Grandeur’, the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, by Dr Oliver Tearle In our pick of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s best poems, we included ‘God’s Grandeur’, a sonnet celebrating ‘the grandeur of God’. Hopkins was one of the greatest religious poets of the entire nineteenth century, and this poem […]
The life and poems of the Victorian era’s adolescent poet Who is being described? Born in the 1840s, he died young, and his poetry was only published after his death. When it appeared – in the early twentieth century – it was thanks to Robert Bridges, who became UK Poet […]
10 great poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and why you should read them – selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Whittling down a great poet’s oeuvre to 10 essential must-read poems is always going to be difficult, and the list of the best Hopkins poems which follows is, we confess, somewhat […]