Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First PublishedHopkins, Gerard Manley
General
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
Poetry
Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in
the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five
stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of
Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless
Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally
deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed
to him without some impeachment of his sincerity; and
that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield to
the rather strong presumption which their technical skill
supplies in favour of his authorship. It is true that the
'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man-
ner; but that was probably common to most of these
festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the
positive objections of verbal criticism which would reject
the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copy of either
of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems
(Nos. 18 and 37), nor mentioned them as productions of
his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of
these attempts he met with any appreciation at the time;
it was after the publication of Miles's book in 1894 that
his co-religionists began to recognize his possible merits,
and their enthusiasm has not perhaps been always wise.
It is natural that they should, as some of them openly
state they do, prefer the poems that I am rejecting to
those which I print; but this edition was undertaken in
response to a demand that, both in England and America,
has gradually grown up from the genuinely poetic interest
felt in the poems which I have gradually introduced to the
public:--that interest has been no doubt welcomed and
accompanied by the applause of his particular religious
associates, but since their purpose is alien to mine I regret
that I am unable to indulge it; nor can I put aside the
overruling objection that G. M. H. would not have wished
these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more
serious artistic work. I do not think that they would
please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.
1. ST. DOROTHEA. Written when an exhibitioner at Balliol
College. Contemporary autograph in A, and another
almost identical in H, both undated. Text from A. This
poem was afterwards expanded, shedding its relative pro-
nouns, to 48 lines divided among three speakers, 'an
Angel, the protonotary Theophilus, (and) a Catechumen':
the grace and charm of original lost:--there is an auto-
graph in A and other copies exist. This was the first of
the poems that I saw, and G. M. H. wrote it out for me
(in 1866?).
2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page
with last, in H. Text is from a slightly later autograph
undated in A. The different copies vary.
3. HABIT OF PERFECTION. Two autographs in A; the earlier
dated Jan. 18, 19, 1866. The second, which is a good
deal altered, is apparently of same date as text of No. 2.
Text follows this later version. Published in Miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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