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