The Theme of Death in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Because past and present criticism has stressed the difficulty of understanding the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the ordinary reader approaches it with prejudice and a sense of inferiority, thinking that he is not well equipped to cope with it. There are other ways, however, of looking at Hopkins, and the lover of poetry should not allow surface oddness and obscurity to obstruct his view. I believe that if the reader is given grounds to realize the depth of thought in Hopkins’ poems, he will find them worth whatever their initial difficulty. In the following study, I propose to examine one of the themes which runs through Hopkins’ poetry and gives it depth: the idea of the mercy and power of God as it is expressed in the motif of death. Hopkins presents two aspects of death, the physical and the spiritual, and relates them to God\u27s power and mercy: to His power as causing fear and to His mercy as arousing hope, I will include in my study of this theme references to preparations for death and the results of death, in other words, life and after-life in relation to death. Then, because of the importance of Hopkins\u27 imagery in the total effect he achieves, I will note those images which are most effective in the development of the death theme