Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889 19th century
Praise wrung from an exhausted body, and prayer that dares to complain.
Who was Gerard Manley Hopkins?
Born into a comfortable Anglican family, he became a Catholic at Oxford, entered the Jesuits and burned his early poems. He began writing again in 1875 and published nothing: his verse circulated in a few letters to friends. A priest in the working parishes of Liverpool, then a professor of Greek in Dublin, he went through years of exhaustion and dryness out of which came the so-called terrible sonnets. His poems appeared thirty years after his death.
In their own words
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend with thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.