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Famous Hopkins Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Hopkins poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hopkins poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hopkins poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying, What I...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley



...God with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred. 
Each be other's comfort kind:
Déep, déeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind. 

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríump...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast: 
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips, 
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East 
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 
You vigil-keepers with low flames...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, -- sweets for bitter. 

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow, -- 
And a quince in hand, -- not one
Is set upon your boughs below;
Not set, because th...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:  th...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley



...Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
 Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
 Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies? 
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
 Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
 And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips y...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...ice to brand, or injur'd worth adorn,
And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.
Not but there are, who merit other palms;
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:
The boys and girls whom charity maintains,
Implore your help in these pathetic strains:
How could devotion touch the country pews,
Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.
The silenc'd preacher yields to p...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home. 
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. 

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of ...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...May is Mary's month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why: 
Her feasts follow reason, 
Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day; 
But the Lady Month, May, 
Why fasten that upon her, 
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter 
Than the most are must delight her? 
Is it opportunest 
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fang...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above; 
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love, 
But feel the long success of sin.

My heaven is brass and iron my earth: 
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay, 
So harden'd is it in th...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands
Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands!
In four brief cycles round the punctual sun
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
Howbeit she was born
Unnoised as any stealing summe...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Wha...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound 
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound....Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, ... stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme's vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' ...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Laybrother of the Society of Jesus


Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say; 
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field, 
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day. 
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield 
Unseen, the heroic breast not outwar...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W. To-night, sir! 
T. Soon...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, ...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Love I was shewn upon the mountain-side
And bid to catch Him ere the dropp of day.
See, Love, I creep and Thou on wings dost ride: 
Love it is evening now and Thou away; 
Love, it grows darker here and Thou art above; 
Love, come down to me if Thy name be Love.

My national old Egyptian reed gave way; 
I took of vine a cross-barred rod or rood.
Then next I...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...The shepherd's brow, fronting forked lightning, owns 
The horror and the havoc and the glory 
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story 
Of just, majestical, and giant groans. 
But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary 
Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori— 
What bass is our viol for tr...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things