To the
happy memory of five Franciscan nuns
exiles by the Falck Laws
drowned between midnight and morning of
Dec 7th 1875
PART THE FIRST
1
THOU mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
2
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
3
The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.
4.
I am soft sift
In an hourglass – at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.
5
I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.
6
Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt-
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt-
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).
7
It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;
Warm-laid life of a womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden’s-knee;
The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat:
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,
Though felt before, though in high flood yet –
What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
8
Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a lush-kept plush capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush! – flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full! – Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ’s feet-
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it – men go.
9
Be adored among men,
God, three-numbered form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm ;
Father and fondler of heart thou has wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
10
With an anvil-ding
And with fire in him forge thy will
Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring
Through him, melt him but master him still:
Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul.
Or as Austin, a lingering out sweet skill,
Make mercy in all of us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.
The first part of the Wreck of the Deutschland is a prelude to the second narrative part on the actual shipwreck. It
is an impassioned meditation on the God of Christians, dwelling on the power and masterhood of God and, in
particular, on the tension and ambivalence in the Christian understanding of tragedy and suffering. The
meditation is intensely personal – we have Hopkins’ own word for this – “ I may add for your greater interest and
edification that what refers to myself in the poem is all strictly and literally true and did all occur”.
Stanza 1
“And after it almost unmade, what with dread … “.
The second half of this stanza refers to man’s becoming aware of God the Creator of everything. Fear and awe are
components of this awareness . c.f. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.
“and dost thou touch me afresh ? Over again, I feel thy finger and find thee. “
i.e. once through God’s original act of creation and subsequently, through the exercise of our free will, when we
respond to God..
Stanzas 2 & 3
These stanzas (probably) describes Hopkins’ decision to become a Jesuit. Unlike his decision to become a
Catholic the decision to become a Jesuit was a difficult one.. Stanza 2 describes the hours of anxious and fearful
prayer that preceded the moment of commitment. Stanza 3 describes the actual making of the commitment in
terms of a bird making a sudden swoop from one perch to another. In stanza 3 line 4 “that spell” means “at that
period”. The first two lines of Stanza 3 describes the pressures forcing his leap of commitment – the “hurtle of
hell behind” and “the frown of his face before”. The ambiguity of “frown” is characteristic – a frown of
disapproval ? – a frown of concentration ? The leap of faith must be made without all uncertainties being
resolved.
Stanza 4.
This stanza consists of two extended metaphors. In the first the appearance of firmness of conviction is belied by
an inner dissolution like sand in an upturned hour glass. In the second a serenity of faith is unobtrusively
supported by the gift of the Gospel, like water in well fed by streams coming off the hill. “Voel” is Welsh word
for “bare hill” on which the mountain streams would be visible, appearing like ropes.
Stanza 5
“Kissing one’s hand” is an ancient religious gesture – cf Job xxx1 26-27.
“It must be emphasised that God’s nature is a ‘mystery’ - it cannot be comprehended by pure reason; the
antinomy of His love and stern masterhood must be borne in on the mind prepared to meet him Him, driven home
by sensory experience and mystical illumination; it must then be dwelt on, actualised , “kept at stress” by the will,
by faith” - Gardner & McKenzie
Stanza 6-8
This is the specifically Christian part of his conception of God.. God has revealed himself to us , not primarily
through the awesome wonders of nature, (as delivered by stars and storms) or as a serene omniscience and
omnipotence (out of his bliss) but through the Incarnation and the passion and death of Our Lord.. The revelation
of God in Christ, unlike the stars and the storms, “rides time like riding a river” – i.e is both specifically anchored
in a particular instant and transcending the passage of time.
Stanza 8 is probably the most difficult stanza of the part. Gardner & McKenzie write :
“Though the lightening stress of mystical revelation has been felt in all ages, its main discharge into the world was
from the dark cloud of Christ’s Passion. It is the heart in extremity which best understands and proclaims the
beauty and terror of that Sacrifice. Some are forced to cry How bitter! . Others taste only the sweetness. But sour
or sweet the result is overwhelming conviction”.
Stanzas 9 & 10
These stanzas give expression to Hopkins’ religious sensibility with all its tensions, fraughtnerss, paradox and
ambivalence. Stanza 10 contrasts the sudden conversion of St. Oaul with the protracted one of St. Augustine.
Notes on Rhythm:
GMH: ‘But when in the winter of ’75 the Deutschland was wrecked . . . I was affected by the account and
happening to say so to my rector he said that he wished someone would write a poem on the subject. On this hint I
set to work and, though my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new
rhythm which now I realised on paper. To speak shortly, it consists in scanning by accents or stresses alone,
without any account of the number of syllables, so that a foot may be one strong syllable or it may be many light
and one strong. I do not say the idea is altogether new; there are hints of it in music in nursery rhymes and
popular jingles, in the poets themselves . . But no one has professedly used it and made it the principle throughout,
that I know of. Nevertheless to me it appears, I own, to be better and more natural system that the ordinary
system, much more flexible and capable of much greater effects.’
(Letter XVI, P 187, G)
In Part the First the distribution of the stresses in the stanza is 2 – 3 – 4 – 3 – 5 – 5 – 4 – 6; but in Part the Second
the first line has 3 stresses, so is 3 – 3 – 4 - 3 - 5 - 5 - 4 - 6 .
GMH: ‘Note – Be pleased, reader, since the rhythm in which the following poem is written is new, strongly to
mark the beats of the measure according to the number belonging to each of the eight lines of the stanza, as the
indentation guides the eye, namely two and three and four and three and five and four and six; not disguising the
rhythm and rhyme, as some readers do, who treat poetry as if it were prose fantastically written to rule, but laying
on the beats too much stress rather than too little; . . . Which syllables however are strong and which light is better
told by the ear than by any instruction that could be in short space given. . . . And so throughout let the stress be
made to fetch out both the strength of the syllables and the meaning and feeling of the words.’
(P255 Rhythm and Scansion, G &M)
‘Why do I employ sprung rhythm at all? Because it is the nearest to the rhythm of prose, that is the native and
natural rhythm of speech, the least forced, the most rhetorical and emphatic of all possible rhythms, combining as it
seems to me, opposite and, one wd. have thought, incompatible excellences, markedness of rhythm – that is
rhythm’s self – and naturalness of expression . . . My verse is less to be read than heard, as I have told you
before; it is oratorical, that is the rhythm is so’ (P257, LI P46, G
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