Windhover, The, is a poem by the English poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. It was written in 1877 but not published until 1918, nearly 20 years after Hopkins’s death. Although Hopkins is recognized as a major poet today, he did not receive wide encouragement during his lifetime. His poems were noted for their highly original and complex word patterns, and critics in his day rejected the poems as too difficult. Hopkins feared disapproval from the Jesuit order he had joined in 1868, and he did not persist in efforts to publish his work.
“The Windhover,” like most of Hopkins’s work, is religious in inspiration. It describes the poet’s witnessing of the flight of a windhover, or kestrel (a type of falcon). As its name suggests, the windhover is able to hover—or pause as if suspended on air currents—and then to swoop and glide gracefully. The poet’s “heart in hiding” is stirred by the sight, and he sees Jesus Christ (the Prince, or “dauphin”) in the “mastery” of the windhover.
To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for the bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-beak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
With increasing enthusiasm the speaker describes the bird’s qualities, eventually just exclaiming in single words, “oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle!” The use of the word buckle has been much analyzed in discussions about the poem. In general, the word’s meaning is to sum up (as in to join or to clasp) all the wondrous aspects of the windhover. It also suggests their combined force (where buckle can mean to snap under stress) on the enraptured witness. This force is then compared to the “fire” of Christ, whom the speaker now addresses alongside his falcon: “O my chevalier!”
In the final tercet (three-line stanza), the poet sums up his revelation about the power of such visions of beauty. He realizes that the “sheer plod” of plowing can make “sillion” (the furrow in the earth) shine, or that dark embers can yet shine “gold vermilion.” In other words, from toil and suffering can come beauty and wonder. On another level, this represents the story of Jesus Christ, from whose suffering and sacrifice came divine joy.
Hopkins is often credited for the rediscovery and development of what he called “sprung rhythm.” Verse written in sprung rhythm (also called “abrupt rhythm”) does not conform to the more conventional flow of stressed and unstressed syllables. Instead, it can place several stresses in a row, serving to accentuate the words themselves. The most obvious effect is of greater emotional intensity, and a sound more like natural speech, especially when excited.
These rhythms, when used with the poet’s highly original vocabulary, can result in a dense kind of poetry. Hopkins’s use of language is personal and can seem impenetrable at times. But few other writers have experimented so daringly with words and suggested such passion in doing so. The poetry of Hopkins can be more demanding than other verse, but it can also be more rewarding in the richness and variety that are uncovered after careful reading.
For more information about Hopkins, see Hopkins, Gerard Manley. See also English literature (Later Victorian literature); Poetry (Sounds).
