Gerard Manley Hopkins, an Opening Passage

The following is the opening passage from The Wreck of the Deutschland, by Hopkins:

“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 & 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”

Hopkins was an artist of unique skill, humour and insight. There is much meaning and talent, for example, contained in this short passage.

By using phrases like “giver of breath and bread”, Hopkins playfully encourages the reader to reflect on the language being used, by using similar sounding but differently meaning words together. Hopkins did this frequently, as did James Joyce and Dylan Thomas later on.

Hopkins evokes a strong sense of dynamism, where there is a brilliant use of verbs such as “sway”, “bound” and “fastened”. Significantly, these verbs are also used alliteratively, again showing awareness of the poem's syntax. In Hopkins there is as much awareness of syntax as there is content.

His insight, in recognising the dual nature of reality, is contained in the line “lord of living and dead”, understanding that to be lord of life, one has to be lord of death. Hopkins, as far as I'm concerned, intuited the world accurately.

Presciently, there is a strong expression of physical embodiment in this passage, “thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh”. In a similar way that God constructs Hopkins the poet, Hopkins constructs his poetry. Hopkins understands that all insight and life, and consequently his poetry, begins with the embodied person, not with some abstract notion of transcendence. Around the same time Friedrich Nietzsche also understood this

Hopkins talks about almost being “unmade”, maybe referring to a period of life where he lost sight of the divine, a period of darkness and stagnation. Hopkins is then “touched afresh” by his maker, his insight returning. “Over again” is another frequent example of dynamism in Hopkins, implying a cyclical motion of reaching an end and returning to a beginning. Hopkins reached the end of his dark period and returned to clarity, again aligned with the universe. So begins his poem.