The Windhover

“The Windhover”

• Originally Published: 1918
• Form/Meter: Sonnet/Sprung Rhythm
• Literary Devices: Alliteration, Metaphor, Description, Juxtaposition, Allusion
• Setting: Outdoors
• Central Concern: Devotion to Christ and putting religion ahead of everything else
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: This is a Christian poem about devotion to Jesus Christ

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet

• Bio: British poet born in 1844 in London; lived and wrote in the Victorian era; left the Anglican Church for Roman Catholicism while attending Oxford; joined the priesthood (Jesuit order) in 1877 after years of study; taught and wrote poetry during his tenure in Ireland at the Jesuits’ University College; died of typhoid in 1889; fame achieved posthumously with publication of his poems in 1918 by friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges
• Other Works: “God’s Grandeur” (1918); “Pied Beauty” (1918); “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (1918)

THEMES

• 1 - Awe
• 2 - The Relationship Between the Natural and the Spiritual
• 3 - Spiritual Epiphany