octet, but to the bird? After having called the bird “kingdom of daylight’s dauphin”, with the imagery of riding a horse, is he now calling him “my chevalier”, and even “my dear”? Or is it the poet speaking to someone else, after having turned away from “Brute beauty and valor and act”? Those words imply giving himself airs, taking pride in himself, and pluming himself, in a manner contrary to the standard of Christ our Lord, to whom the poet has dedicated his poem.
“O my chevalier!” Then, I further ask, “Is that other person Christ himself?” Is the poet telling Christ to “buckle” down, with the assurance that by doing so he will be “a billion times told lovelier, more dangerous”? Is he calling Christ “my chevalier”? Is he reminding Christ that “sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine”, and that “blue-bleak embers Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion”? That is not to be thought!
“O my chevalier!” So I continue asking, “Isn’t it rather Christ who is telling these things to the poet?” Then, if the poet has described the bird in flight, if only in his poetic imagination, in the eight lines of the octet, may we not say it is someone else, no less a person than “Christ our Lord”, to whom he subsequently dedicates his poem, who is speaking to his heart during the remaining six lines of the sestet?
“O my chevalier!” Given this latter hypothesis, that it is Christ our Lord, as the better self of the poet, who is speaking to him, to his “heart in hiding”, then everything in this puzzling poem falls into place. In the light of the two Ignatian meditations on “The Kingdom of Christ” and “The Two Standards”, mayn’t we say that the composition of place which occupies the octet is immediately followed by a colloquy? And in that colloquy isn’t it rather Christ speaking to the heart of the poet than the poet speaking to Christ?
“O my chevalier!” After all, it isn’t Christ who needs any such reassurances as that “the fire that breaks from thee then (is) a billion times told lovelier”, or that “sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine”, or that “blue-bleak embers” on falling “gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion”. It is rather the poet who needs such reassurances. It is the poet who is authoritatively told not to pay attention to the “Brute beauty and valor and act” of the bird. Those qualities are rather a temptation to pride, which is distinctive of the standard of Satan, whereas it is to “buckle” down in humble obedience to his superiors, that characterizes the other standard of Christ.
“O my chevalier!” Thus it is the poet who is addressed as “my chevalier”, even as Christ speaks to his followers as “knights” in the meditation of “The Kingdom”. He even lovingly caresses the poet as “my dear”. It is the poet who has to endure the “sheer plod” of his theological studies from day to day, according to Ignatius’ exhortation in his Rules for Scholastics. It is the poet who sees his religious motivation reduced from the blazing fire of his noviceship days to merely “blue-bleak embers”. It is the poet who needs the reassurance that even in these embers – as Wordsworth comforts himself in his “Immortality Ode” – there lives a hidden fire, so that when they fall through the grate they “gall themselves and gash gold-vermilion”.
“O my chevalier!” All this is what Christ, as the better self of the poet, the heart of Hopkins, has to tell him on the occasion of his vision of the wind-hover, whether imprisoned in the glass case or flying over his free fells. Whether the bird is free or in prison, the object of vision or imagination, doesn’t matter so much. What matters is the description of the bird in flight as preparation for what follows in the heart of the poet. In either case, the poet is passive. With his eyes, whether real or imaginary, he sees the bird and admires the achievement and mastery of the bird from his “heart in hiding”.
“O my chevalier!” Then within his heart he hears the voice of one speaking to him as it were in the depths of his conscience, whether the voice of God or, more precisely, the voice of Christ our Lord. He hears one addressing him as “my chevalier”, or knight, even as “my dear”, the beloved disciple. He hears one reassuring him that it isn’t the doing deeds of knightly prowess, such as “the achieve of, the mastery of the thing” shown by the bird. It is rather buckling down in humility and obedience, plodding through the heavy earth of his studies, allowing his seeming “blue-bleak embers” to fall and gall themselves. It is then that the outcome will be “a billion times told lovelier” in the symbolic form of “gold-vermilion”.
Thus it isn’t so much the poet who has caught sight of the bird from the beginning of his poem. It is Christ who has caught the poet in his “toils of grace”, just as a fisherman catches a haul of fishes in the Sea of Galilee. It is also, I may add, just as Cordelia catches her dear father Lear, even when he thinks he has caught her. “I caught this morning.”
“Glory be to God for dappled things!”
“Glory be to God.” AMDG – literally, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”, that is, “To the Greater Glory of God”. That is the motto of Ignatius and the Society of Jesus which he founded in 1540. It is a motto to which we have long been accustomed, at least within the Catholic Church, and especially within the Society of Jesus. But it may be likened to the proverbial water flowing off a duck’s back. It is so familiar, it is all but meaningless.
“Glory be.” One even wonders why a poet like Gerard Manley Hopkins could have admitted such a banality in the opening line of one of his poems. Only he is always opening his poems with such banalities. From his viewpoint they may be banal in their common acceptance. But he delights in proceeding to show how little banal they really are. After all, isn’t every familiar phrase banal owing to its familiarity? But there was a time when it was newly minted and not yet familiar. And then it was charged with meaning even as “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”.
“Glory be.” Glory – greatness – grandeur – these words all begin with g followed by the liquid l or r, and in the English language (another phrase with three small g’s) they all alliterate with God. They let us think, for instance, of the glory of the sun at sunrise and sunset, and the glory of the moon and the stars at night when the sky is uncluttered with clouds. They convey the impression of a certain divine radiance such as filled the tent of meeting and the temple of Jerusalem to indicate the Lord’s presence among his people. It was the same radiance that came upon Jesus both during his baptism in the river Jordan and during his transfiguration on the holy mountain.
“Glory be.” We also apply this radiance to the holiness of the saints as depicted in sacred art. We see it particularly around their heads in the form of haloes, and sometimes around their entire bodies. So when the prophet Isaiah beheld the divine vision in the temple, with the seraphim proclaiming, “Holy, holy, holy!” or as we put it in the Latin liturgy, “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus!” we may well feel like echoing them with the answering words, “Glory, glory, glory!” in accord with the song of the angels to the shepherds on the hills over Bethlehem. It is a word we feel like repeating over and over again. Such was the spirit of Handel in his unending repetition of the Hebrew acclamation in the Hallelujah Chorus of the “Messiah”. Of such a word, repeated again and again, it seems we never grow tired, especially when set to resounding music.
“Glory be.” In the same way, I may add with G.K. Chesterton, the sun itself never tires of rising or setting from day to day, but it goes on and on rising and setting. And then we may add, with Shakespeare, “till the last syllable of recorded time”.
“Glory be to God.” All this is, however, so traditional and conservative. It is all so foreign to the modern taste. Unlike the seraphim and cherubim, we so easily tire of repetition. Unlike the sun, the moon and the stars, unlike the birds who have only one song to sing, unlike the insects who are forever chirping on the same note, unlike even the poet Shakespeare, who dares to ask himself, “Why write I still all one, ever the same?” we find such repetition so boring, so banal,
“Glory be to God.” As Shakespeare also says, lamenting the modern taste of his time, “Novelty is only in request.” We are like the Athenians of Paul’s time who went around