Preface to Notes · 2

37. ‘MARY MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE. Stonyhurst, May ’83.’ Autograph in A.--Text and title from later autograph in B. Taken by Dean Beeching into ‘A Book of Christmas Verse’ 1895 and thence, incorrectly, by Orby Shipley in ‘Carmina Mariana’. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, ’83, to have been written to ‘hang up among the verse com- positions in the tongues. ... I did a piece in the same metre as Blue in the mists all day.’ Note Chaucer’s account of the physical properties of the air, ‘House of Fame’, ii. 256, seq.

38. ‘To WHAT SERVES MORTAL BEAUTY? (Common rhythm highly stressed: sonnet.) Aug. 23, ’85.’ Autograph in A.--Another autograph in B with a few variants from which A was chosen, the deletion of alternatives incom- plete. Thirdly a copy sent to R. W. D., apparently later than A, but with errors of copy. The text given is guided by this version in D, and needs in line 9 is substituted there for the once in A and B, probably because of once in line 6.--Original draft exists in H, on same page with 39 and 40. The following is his signature at this date:

Your affectionate friend Gerard M. Hopkins S.J. May 29 1885

Transcriber’s note: This signature and date is displayed as a handwritten image in the original.

39. SOLDIER. ‘Clongower, Aug. 1885.’ Autograph in H, with a few corrections which I have taken for lines 6 and 7, of which the first draft runs:

It fancies; it deems; dears the artist after his art; So feigns it finds as, &c.

The MS. marks the caesural place in ten of the lines in line 2, between Both and these. l 3, at the full stop. l. 6, fancies, feigns, deems, take three stresses. l. 11, after man. In line 7 I have added a comma at smart. In l. 10 I have substituted handle for reave of MS.: see note on reave, p. 101; and in l. 13, have hyphened God made flesh. No title in MS.

40. CARRION COMFORT. Autograph in H, in three versions. 1st, deleted draft. 2nd, a complete version, both on same page with 38 and 39. 3rd, with 41 on another sheet, final (?) revision carried only to end of 1. 12 (two detached lines on reverse). Text is this last with last two lines from the 2nd version. Date must be 1885, and this is probably the sonnet ‘written in blood’, of which he wrote in May of that year.--I have added the title and the hyphen in heaven-handling.

41. No worst. Autograph in H, on same page as third draft of 40. One undated draft with corrections embodied in the text here.--l. 5, at end are some marks which look like a hyphen and a comma: no title.

42. ‘TOM’S GARLAND. Sonnet: common rhythm, but with hurried feet: two codas. Dromore, Sept. ’87.’ With full title, A.--Another autograph in B is identical. In line 9 there is a strong accent on I.--l. 10, the capital initial of country is doubtful.--Rhythmical marks omitted. The author’s own explanation of this poem may be read in a letter written to me from ‘Dublin, Feb. 10, ’88: ... I laughed outright and often, but very sardonically, to think you and the Canon could not construe my last son- net; that he had to write to you for a crib. It is plain I must go no further on this road: if you and he cannot understand me who will? Yet, declaimed, the strange constructions would be dramatic and effective. Must I interpret it? It means then that, as St. Paul and Plato and Hobbes and everybody says, the commonwealth or well-ordered human society is like one man; a body with many members and each its function; some higher, some lower, but all honourable, from the honour which belongs to the whole. The head is the sovereign, who has no superior but God and from heaven receives his or her authority: we must then imagine this head as bare (see St. Paul much on this) and covered, so to say, only with the sun and stars, of which the crown is a symbol, which is an ornament but not a covering; it has an enormous hat or skullcap, the vault of heaven. The foot is the day- labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure, “mammock” the earth and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it with their footprints. And the “garlands” of nails they wear are therefore the visible badge of the place they fill, the lowest in the commonwealth. But this place still shares the common honour, and if it wants one advantage, glory or public fame, makes up for it by another, ease of mind, absence of care; and these things are symbolised by the gold and the iron garlands. (O, once explained, how clear it all is!) Therefore the scene of the poem is laid at evening, when they are giving over work and one after another pile their picks, with which they earn their living, and swing off home, knocking sparks out of mother earth not now by labour and of choice but by the mere footing, being strong-shod and making no hardship of hard- ness, taking all easy. And so to supper and bed. Here comes a violent but effective hyperbaton or suspension, in which the action of the mind mimics that of the labourer-- surveys his lot, low but free from care; then by a sudden strong act throws it over the shoulder or tosses it away as a light matter. The witnessing of which lightheartedness makes me indignant with the fools of Radical Levellers. But presently I remember that this is all very well for those who are in, however low in, the Commonwealth and share in any way the common weal; but that the curse of our times is that many do not share it, that they are out- casts from it and have neither security nor splendour; that they share care with the high and obscurity with the low, but wealth or comfort with neither. And this state of things, I say, is the origin of Loafers, Tramps, Corner- boys, Roughs, Socialists and other pests of society. And I think that it is a very pregnant sonnet, and in point of execution very highly wrought, too much so, I am afraid. ... G.M.H.’

43. ‘HARRY PLOUGHMAN. Dromore, Sept. 1887.’ Autograph in A.--Autograph in B has several emendations written over without deletion of original. Text is B with these corrections, which are all good.--line 10, features is the verb.--13, ’s is his. I have put a colon at plough, in place of author’s full stop, for the convenience of reader.-- 15 = his lilylocks windlaced. ‘Saxo cere- comminuit -brum.’--17, Them. These, A.--In the last three lines the grammar intends, ‘How his churl’s grace governs the movement of his booted (in bluff hide) feet, as they are matched in a race with the wet shining furrow overturned by the share’. G. M. H. thought well of this sonnet and wrote on Sept. 28, 1887: ‘I have been touching up some old sonnets you have never seen and have within a few days done the whole of one, I hope, very good one and most of another; the one finished is a direct picture of a ploughman, without afterthought. But when you read it let me know if there is anything like it in Walt Whit- man; as perhaps there may be, and I should be sorry for that.’ And again on Oct. 11, ’87: ‘I will enclose the sonnet on Harry Ploughman, in which burden-lines (they might be recited by a chorus) are freely used: there is in this very heavily loaded sprung rhythm a call for their employment. The rhythm of this sonnet, which is alto- gether for recital, and not for perusal (as by nature verse should be), is very highly studied. From much consider- ing it I can no longer gather any impression of it: perhaps it will strike you as intolerably violent and artificial.’ And again on Nov. 6, ’87: ‘I want Harry Ploughman to be a vivid figure before the mind’s eye; if he is not that the sonnet fails. The difficulties are of syntax no doubt. Dividing a compound word by a clause sandwiched into it was a desperate deed, I feel, and I do not feel that it was an unquestionable success.’

44, 45, 46, 47. These four sonnets (together with No. 56) are all written undated in a small hand on the two sides of a half-sheet of common sermon-paper, in the order in which they are here printed. They probably date back as early as 1885, and may be all, or some of them, those referred to in a letter of Sept. 1, 1885: ‘I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, if in any leisure I try to do anything I make no way--nor with my work, alas! but so it must be.’ I have no certain nor single identification of date.

44. To seem the stranger. H, with corrections which my text embodies.--l. 14, began. I have no other explanation than to suppose an omitted relative pronoun, like _Hero savest_ in No. 17. The sentence would then stand for ‘leaves me a lonely (one who only) began’. No title.

45. I wake and feel. H, with corrections which text embodies: no title.

46. PATIENCE. As 45. l. 2, Patience is. The initial capital is mine, and the comma after ivy in line 6. No title.

47 My own heart. As 45.--1. 6, I have added the comma after comfortless; that word has the same grammatical value as dark in the following line. ‘I cast for comfort, (which) I can no more find in my comfortless (world) than a blind man in his dark world. . . .’--l. 10, MS. accents let.-- 13 and 14, the text here from a good correction separately written (as far as mountains) on the top margin of No. 56. There are therefore two writings of betweenpie, a strange word, in which pie apparently makes a compound verb with between, meaning ‘as the sky seen between dark mountains is brightly dappled’, the grammar such as intervariegates would make. This word might have delighted William Barnes, if the verb ‘to pie’ existed. It seems not to exist, and to be forbidden by homophonic absurdities.

48. ‘HERACLITEAN FIRE. (Sprung rhythm, with many out- rides and hurried feet: sonnet with two [sic] codas.) July 26, 1888. Co. Dublin. The last sonnet [this] pro- visional only.’ Autograph in A.--I have found no other copy nor trace of draft. The title is from A.--line 6, con- struction obscure, rutpeel may be a compound word, MS. uncertain. 8, ? omitted relative pronoun. If so = ‘the manmarks that treadmire toil foot-fretted in it’. MS. does not hyphen nor quite join up foot with fretted.-- 12. MS. has no caesural mark.--On Aug. 18, ’88, he wrote: ‘I will now go to bed, the more so as I am going to preach tomorrow and put plainly to a Highland congrega- tion of MacDonalds, Mackintoshes, Mackillops, and the rest what I am putting not at all so plainly to the rest of the world, or rather to you and Canon Dixon, in a sonnet in sprung rhythm with two codas.’ And again on Sept. 25, ’88: ‘Lately I sent you a sonnet on the Heraclitean Fire, in which a great deal of early Greek philosophical thought was distilled; but the liquor of the distillation did not taste very greek, did it? The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree. Perhaps then more reading would only refine my singularity, which is not what you want.’ Note, that the sonnet has three codas, not two.

49. ALFONSUS. Text from autograph with title and ‘upon the first falling of his feast after his canonisation’ in B. An autograph in A, sent Oct. 3 from Dublin asking for immediate criticism, because the sonnet had to go to Majorca. ‘I ask your opinion of a sonnet written to order on the occasion of the first feast since his canonisation proper of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, a laybrother of our Order, who for 40 years acted as hall porter to the College of Palma in Majorca; he was, it is believed, much favoured by God with heavenly light and much persecuted by evil spirits. The sonnet (I say it snorting) aims at being intelligible.’ And on Oct. 9, ’88, ‘I am obliged for your criticisms, “contents of which noted”, indeed acted on. I have improved the sestet. . . . (He defends ‘hew’) ... at any rate whatever is markedly featured in stone or what is like stone is most naturally said to be hewn, and to shape, itself, means in old English to hew and the Hebrew bara to create, even, properly means to hew. But life and living things are not naturally said to be hewn: they grow, and their growth is by trickling increment. . . . The (first) line now stands “Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say “.’

50. ‘JUSTUS ES, &c. Jer. xii. 1 (for title), March 17,’89.’ Autograph in A.--Similar autograph in B, which reads line 9, Sir, life on thy great cause. Text from A, which seems the later, being written in the peculiar faint ink of the corrections in B, and embodying them.--Early drafts in H.

51. ‘To R. B. April 22, ’89.’ Autograph in A. This, the last poem sent to me, came on April 29.--No other copy, but the working drafts in H.--In line 6 the word moulds was substituted by me for combs of original, when the sonnet was published by Miles; and I leave it, having no doubt that G. M. H. would have made some such alteration.

52. ‘SUMMA.’ This poem had, I believe, the ambitious design which its title suggests. What was done of it was destroyed, with other things, when he joined the Jesuits. My copy is a contemporary autograph of 16 lines, written when he was still an undergraduate; I give the first four. A.

53. What being. Two scraps in H. I take the apparently later one, and have inserted the comma in line 3.

54. ‘ON THE PORTRAIT, &c. Monastereven, Co. Kildare, Christmas, ’86.’ Autograph with full title, no corrections, in A. Early drafts in H.

55. The sea took pity. Undated pencil scrap in H.

56. ASHBOUGHS (my title). In H in two versions; first as a curtal sonnet (like 13 and 22) on same sheet with the four sonnets 44-47, and preceding them: second, an apparently later version in the same metre on a page by itself; with expanded variation from seventh line, making thirteen lines for eleven. I print the whole of this second MS., and have put brackets to show what I think would make the best version of the poem: for if the bracketed words were omitted the original curtal sonnet form would be preserved and carry the good corrections. The uncom- fortable eye in the added portion was perhaps to be worked as a vocative referring to first line (?).

57. Hope holds. In H, a torn undated scrap which carries a vivid splotch of local colour.--line 4, a variant has A growing burnish brighter than.

58. ST. WINEFRED. G. M. H. began a tragedy on St. Winefred Oct. ’79, for which he subsequently wrote the chorus, No. 36, above. He was at it again in 1881, and had mentioned the play in his letters, and when, some years later, I determined to write my Feast of Bacchus in six- stressed verse, I sent him a sample of it, and asked him to let me see what he had made of the measure. The MS. which he sent me, April 1, 1885, was copied, and that copy is the text in this book, from A, the original not being discoverable. It may therefore contain copyist’s errors. Twenty years later, when I was writing my Demeter for the lady-students at Somerville College, I re- membered the first line of Caradoc’s soliloquy, and made some use of it. On the other hand the broken line _I have read her eyes in my 1st part of Nero_ is proved by date to be a coincidence, and not a reminiscence.--Caradoc was to ‘die impenitent, struck by the finger of God’.

59. What shall I do. Sent me in a letter with his own melody and a note on the poem. ‘This is not final of course. Perhaps the name of England is too exclusive.’ Date Clongower, Aug. 1885. A.

60. The times are nightfall. Revised and corrected draft in H. The first two lines are corrected from the original opening in old syllabic verse:

The times are nightfall and the light grows less; The times are winter and a world undone;

61. ‘CHEERY BEGGAR.’ Undated draft with much correction, in H. Text is the outcome.

62 and 63. These are my interpretation of the intention of some unfinished disordered verses on a sheet of paper in H. In 63, line 1, furl is I think unmistakable: an apparently rejected earlier version had Soft childhood’s carmine dew-drift down.

64. ‘THE WOODLARK.’ Draft on one sheet of small notepaper in H. Fragments in some disorder: the arrangement of them in the text satisfies me. The word sheath is printed for sheaf of MS., and sheaf recurs in correc- tions. Dating of July 5, ’76.

65. ‘MOONRISE. June 19, 1876.’ H. Note at foot shows intention to rewrite with one stress more in the second half of each line, and the first is thus rewritten ‘in the white of the dusk, in the walk of the morning’.

66. CUCKOO. From a scrap in H without date or title.

67. It being impossible to satisfy myself I give this MS. in facsimile as an example, after p. 92.

68. The child is father. From a newspaper cutting with another very poor comic triolet sent me by G. M. H. They are signed BRAN. His comic attempts were not generally so successful as this is.

69. The shepherd’s brow. In H. Various consecutive full drafts on the same sheet as 51, and date April 3, ’89. The text is what seems to be the latest draft: it has no corrections. Thus its date is between 50 and 51. It might be argued that this sonnet has the same right to be recognised as a finished poem with the sonnets 44-47, but those had several years recognition whereas this must have been thrown off one day in a cynical mood, which he could not have wished permanently to intrude among his last serious poems.

70. ‘TO HIS WATCH.’ H. On a sheet by itself; apparently a fair copy with corrections embodied in this text, except that the original 8th line, which is not deleted, is preferred to the alternative suggestion, Is sweetest comfort’s carol or worst woe’s smart.

71. Strike, churl. H, on same page with a draft of part of No. 45.--l. 4, Have at is a correction for aim at.--This scrap is some evidence for the earlier dating of the four sonnets.

72. ‘EPITHALAMION.’ Four sides of pencilled rough sketches, and five sides of quarto first draft, on ‘Royal University of Ireland’ candidates paper, as if G. M. H. had written it while supervising an examination. Fragments in disorder with erasures and corrections; undated. H.--The text, which omits only two disconnected lines, is my arrangement of the fragments, and embodies the latest corrections. It was to have been an Ode on the occasion of his brother’s marriage, which fixes the date as 1888. It is mentioned in a letter of May 25, whence the title comes.--I have printed dene for dean (in two places). In l. 9 of poem cover = covert, which should be in text, as G. M. H. never spelt phonetically.--l. 11, of may be at, MS. uncertain.-- page 90, line 16, shoots is, I think, a noun.

73. Thee, God, I come from. Unfinished draft in H. Undated, probably ’85, on same sheet with first draft of No. 38.-- l. 2, day long. MS. as two words with accent on day.-- l. 17, above the words before me the words left with me are written as alternative, but text is not deleted. All the rest of this hymn is without question. In l. 19, Yea is right. After the verses printed in text there is some versified credo intended to form part of the complete poem; thus:

Jesus Christ sacrificed On the cross. . . . Moulded, he, in maiden’s womb, Lived and died and from the tomb Rose in power and is our Judge that comes to deal our doom.

74. To him who. Text is an underlined version among working drafts in H.--line 6, freed = got rid of, banished. This sense of the word is obsolete; it occurs twice in Shakespeare, cp. Cymb. III. vi. 79, ‘He wrings at some distress . . . would I could free ‘t!’.

FINIS