Religious Themes In Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poetry

Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the greatest Victorian poets, is well known for his poems with religious themes, about God’s divine existence and His relationship with the world. He also created the “sprung rhythm”, a metrical system that can be found in his poetry, and beside that, he introduced the concepts of “Inscape” and “Instress”. However, these two doctrines have a pre-Victorian history.They are comparable to the definition of imagination and fancy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge .His notion of imagination focuses on the unity between objects, while his other notion, fancy, concentrates on their distinction. The concepts “Inscape” and “Instress” are key words in Hopkins’ poetry. The prefix “in-“ of the first concept, refers to the inner core of diversity, and that is the “self” in all things, and the word “scape” suggests vastness. One should see the world in its

The poem is dedicated “to Christ our Lord”, suggesting that his creation has religious implications, and it opens with the catching of a kestrel: “I caught this morning morning's minion, king-/ dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding”(lines 1,2). The word “catch” it’s used with a metaphorical sense, therefore it’s unlikely that the poet physically captured the kestrel, but he caught it with his sight. The poet calls it “morning’s minion” and “daylight’s dauphin”, which shows his delight at the wonderful flight of the bird. Its flight has a major emotional impact on Hopkins, and it becomes an object of contemplation and and an occasion for meditation. The importance of this sight is emphasized by the specific word “this morning”, rather than one random morning. Therefore, the “catching” represent the act of the inscaping of the kestrel’s flight, while the flight itself defines the experience of its