The Theme of Hopkins Sonnet, The Windhover Essay -- Sonnet Essays

The Theme of Hopkins Sonnet, The Windhover The Windhover is one of the approximately discussed, and it would seem least understood, poems of way of lifern English literature. These opening words of a Hopkins critic forewarn the reader of Hopkins The Windhover that few critics agree on the consequence of this sonnet. Most critics do concur, however, that Hopkins of import theme is based on the senseless Christian principle of profit through sacrifice. Although most critics eventually sharpen on this pivotal concept, each one approaches the poem from a divergent analytical perspective. The various critics of Hopkins The Windhover find woven throughout its diverse levels expressions of Hopkins central theme all toil and painful things work together for vertical to those who sacrificially love God. The research of Alfred doubting Thomas provides an interesting place to begin a study of the major(ip) critical approaches to the dominant theme in The Windhover. Thomas chooses to vie w the poems theme through what he feels are its sources, citing as the major source Hopkins life as a Jesuit. Thomas articulation of the central conundrum of the poem, then, is in the terms of the ascetic life which the Jesuit poet would have see Hopkins, the priest, desires to obtain spiritual glory/gain through sacrificing a blue life for one of religious tasks. Thomas mentions that this priestly life is metaphorically pictured in two distinct manners, one in the musical octave the other in the sestet. Within the octave, Thomas believes that the chivalric terms suggest the first metaphorical picture-a religious man as a sawhorse of Christ. He adds, further, that both the terminology and the picture itself have their source in the Jesuit handbook Spiritual Exercises. ... ...giving paradox of salvation history. The apostle Paul chose to exempt this essential principle through the science of exposition. Hopkins, however, decided to express the unknown heart of the gospel thro ugh the art of poetry. Both men were passe-partout communicators Christ Jesus, who being in the form of Daylights dauphin, thought it not robbery to be equal with the King- But emptied himself of all pride, and took upon himself to buckle to the form of a ploughman. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto galling, even the gold-vermillion death of the cross. For this reader, Hopkins has chosen the favorable mode of expression. The poetics of The Windhover reverberate with the resonance of the fundamental principle of the gospel The Windhover represents what oft was thought, however neer so well expressed.