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The Windhover

The poem "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins describes a bird hovering in the air. The first stanza focuses on the physical beauty and motion of the bird. The second stanza makes a comparison between the beauty of the bird and the greater glory of Christ. It says the bird's beauty is only a small spark compared to Christ's spiritual power and grandeur. The final stanza says that striving for spiritual perfection, like the bird's perfect motion, is part of human nature and serves to reveal our inner glow, just as using a plow or breaking open embers reveals the gold within.

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Petruta Iordache
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422 views1 page

The Windhover

The poem "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins describes a bird hovering in the air. The first stanza focuses on the physical beauty and motion of the bird. The second stanza makes a comparison between the beauty of the bird and the greater glory of Christ. It says the bird's beauty is only a small spark compared to Christ's spiritual power and grandeur. The final stanza says that striving for spiritual perfection, like the bird's perfect motion, is part of human nature and serves to reveal our inner glow, just as using a plow or breaking open embers reveals the gold within.

Uploaded by

Petruta Iordache
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

THE WINDHOVER

Commentary

This poem follows the pattern of so many of Hopkinss sonnets, in that a sensuous
experience or description leads to a set of moral reflections. Part of the beauty of the poem
lies in the way Hopkins integrates his masterful description of a birds physical feat with an
account of his own hearts response at the end of the first stanza. However, the sestet has
puzzled many readers because it seems to diverge so widely from the material introduced in
the octave. At line nine, the poem shifts into the present tense, away from the recollection of
the bird. The horse-and-rider metaphor with which Hopkins depicted the windhovers motion
now give way to the phrase my chevaliera traditional Medieval image of Christ as a
knight on horseback, to which the poems subtitle (or dedication) gives the reader a clue. The
transition between octave and sestet comes with the statement in lines 9-11 that the natural
(brute) beauty of the bird in flight is but a spark in comparison with the glory of Christ,
whose grandeur and spiritual power are a billion times told lovelier, more dangerous.
The first sentence of the sestet can read as either descriptive or imperative, or both.
The idea is that something glorious happens when a beings physical body, will, and action
are all brought into accordance with Gods will, culminating in the perfect self-expression.
Hopkins, realizing that his own heart was in hiding, or not fully committed to its own
purpose, draws inspiration from the birds perfectly self-contained, self-reflecting action. Just
as the hovering is the action most distinctive and self-defining for the windhover, so spiritual
striving is mans most essential aspect. At moments when humans arrive at the fullness of
their moral nature, they achieve something great. But that greatness necessarily pales in
comparison with the ultimate act of self-sacrifice performed by Christ, which nevertheless
serves as our model and standard for our own behavior.
The final tercet within the sestet declares that this phenomenon is not a wonder, but
rather an everyday occurrencepart of what it means to be human. This striving, far from
exhausting the individual, serves to bring out his or her inner glowmuch as the daily use of
a metal plow, instead of wearing it down, actually polishes itcausing it to sparkle and shine.
The suggestion is that there is a glittering, luminous core to every individual, which a
concerted religious life can expose. The subsequent image is of embers breaking open to
reveal a smoldering interior. Hopkins words this image so as to relate the concept back to the
Crucifixion: The verb gash (which doubles for gush) suggests the wounding of Christs
body and the shedding of his gold-vermilion blood.

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