“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