Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (ePub)

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), an esteemed English poet, is celebrated for his innovative use of language, particularly his concept of 'sprung rhythm'. Born into a devout Anglican family, Hopkins converted to Roman Catholicism and joined the Society of Jesus, where he would live as a Jesuit priest. A sense of spiritual fervor and conflict characterizes much of his poetry, which often grapples with themes of nature, religion, and inner struggle.

In his lifetime, his work was largely unpublished and unrecognized, with 'Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins' posthumously released in 1918 by his friend Robert Bridges, who was then the Poet Laureate of the UK. This seminal volume contained what would become some of Hopkins's most famous poems, including 'The Wreck of the Deutschland,' 'The Windhover,' and 'Pied Beauty.' His innovative poetics, particularly his use of sprung rhythm and his philosophy of 'inscape' and 'instress,' broke with conventional Victorian era verse to create a radically new rhythmic structure echoing natural speech. These stylistic elements, along with his use of imagery and intense emotion, prefigured Modernist poetry and left an indelible mark on the literary world. Hopkins has since been recognized as an important precursor to the Modernist movement and one of the greatest poets of the 19th century.