Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Short Analysis of Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Windhover’ was written by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) in 1877, but, like many of Hopkins’s poems, was not published until 1918, long after his death.

It’s one of his most widely anthologised poems and some analysis of it may help readers to appreciate it as a curious and interesting example of the sonnet form. So, what follows is a very brief analysis of the poem, designed to act as a short introduction to its linguistic power and its themes.

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Five Fascinating Facts about Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The life of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins told through five great pieces of trivia

1. He kept a record of the dirty things he got up to. In his diaries, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) would write ‘O. H.’ whenever he had succumbed to the temptation to, shall we say, pleasure himself. This stood for ‘Old Habits’, but scholars are now largely agreed on what Hopkins was hinting at. As a Jesuit priest of strict self-control – he burned his early poems in 1868 when he joined the Society of Jesus, as he believed that even writing poetry was too self-indulgent for a man of God – he didn’t look kindly on himself when he gave in to these ‘old habits’. Hopkins was homosexual, and homoerotic undercurrents run throughout his work, though as far as we know he never had a romantic relationship with anyone. He also – controversially – viewed writing as a peculiarly ‘male gift’, drawing a covert link between pens and penises, as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pointed out. But lest you think the only interesting Hopkins facts relate to sex, let’s turn to more wholesome pursuits, shall we? Let’s turn to poetry… 

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