You are on page 1of 10

303

THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL:


DONNE AND HOPKINS IN MEDITATION
Our moral life develops like a network, the human threads of
which intercross, without our knowledge, with the dark and
unperceived threads of heavenly and diabolical spirits.1
Francois Channont, S.J.

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


The religious poem, especially the poem sequence, often constitutes a
re-enactment of a poet's own spiritual progress in microcosm; the poet, in
effect, projects his private meditations onto a mental stage. Therefore, it is
natural that the art coming out of this process should reflect the poet's
personal experience in some way; the persona of a religious poem is in fact
authenticated by the autobiographical context posited by the author. Yet
this implies no mere transcription of raw experience, for the material is
passed through the crucible of art. In an age of overt confessional poetry,
it seems easy to mistake earlier poetry for something which it is not, i.e.
the direct outpourings of agonized souls.
The "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne and the "Terrible Sonnets" of
Gerard Manley Hopkins may well be misread if one ignores the tradition
of meditation both sequences came out of, which is essentially Ignatian. I
shall examine both in the light of this system of spiritual exercises to show
how each poet transformed his own experience into art as an aot of devotion
and self-examination. I hope to explore the common ground that exists
between poetry and meditation itself, which should help us to avoid mis-
reading these great poems through ignorance of their relation to a specific
tradition.
The sonnet sequence is, in effeot, the stage onto whioh the poet projects
his persona and subjects it to analysis in order to discover what elements
or "movements of the soul" are compatible with the devout life and which
are not. The "dark and unpercoived threads of diabolical and heavenly
spirits" referred to in the epigraph by Father Channont must be separated.
In this tradition of self-scrutiny, one allows evil thoughts absolute, but
temporary, freedom to dominate. It is a question of knowing one's enemy.
Both Donne and Hopkins do this in their sequences, which are consciously
ordered, moving as in all religious exercises "from Fear to Charity, from
distrust of the self to confidence in God."* As is the case with Paradise
Lost, another great devotional poem, the reader is encouraged to fall in
these sequences, only to make his progress into grace at the end all the more
wondrous.
This technique is not only good religion, it is good drama also. Antony
F. Bellette has recently observed that "few poems of Donne's are islands,
complete unto themselves. They are usually part of a larger dramatic
304

context, and the tone of each poem, the poet's very voice, shapes and
modulates itself according to the person who is spoken to " 3 This is
less so for Hopkins in general, but true for the "Terrible Sonnets," which
only make sense if read as a dramatic sequence along Ignatian lines.
Both Donne and Hopkins had direct knowledge of the Ignatian methods,
both, in fact, wrote something on Ignatius: Donne's satirical Ignatius Hxs
Conclave (1610-11) and Hopkins's unpublished Commentary on the Spiritual
Exercises (see Journals and Papers). In spite of Donne's later disaffection
with the Roman Church, he was brought up as a Catholic by a pious mother

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


and had important associations with his Jesuit uncle. The Ignatian methods
were second nature to him, as Louis L. Martz has often shown. Hopkins
was himself a Jesuit and had daily contact with the Spiritual Exercises
(1535) This influence is apparent in both sonnet sequences, which draw on
Ignatius for structure and, occasionally, subject matter and imagery.
Helen Gardner stresses the Ignatian aspect of the Donne sequence in
her edition of the Divine Poems 4 Part of her argument for the integrity
of the "Holy Sonnets" as a sequence, excluding La Corona and "A Litany",
is based on its meditative progression. She says. "The first six are quite
clearly a short sequence on one of the most familiar themes for meditation
death and judgement, or the Last Things . . The last six sonnets are less
of a sequence; but they are on two aspects of a single theme: love." 5 She
concludes that the sonnets were intended to be read as a consecutive set
of twelve poems made up of two contrasting sets of six; she suggests that
the overall theme of the sequence is. "We loved him because he first loved
us." This theme is, in fact, central to the Spiritual Exercises, where the
movement of each exercise is from fear and despair to consolation and
affection (praise) The "Holy Sonnets" adhere to this structure individually
and as a whole, as I hope to demonstrate.
The conclusion to the first of Donne's sonnets, for instance, leaves very
little room for consolation:
Oh I shall soon despaire, when I doe see
That thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt'not chuse me,
And Satan hates mee, yet is loth to lose mee.
The second and third sonnets, likewise, are dominated by an overwhelming
sense ofsin ("Oh my blacke soule!" and "This is my playes last scene . . .").
Not until the fourth sonnet, however, is the poet led to contrition: "Teach
mee how to repent . . ."he asks God. The reader expects consolation to be
given, but the drama needs expansion for its best effect, and regression
occurs in the fifth sonnet as the speaker contemplates divine injustice: "If
lecherous goats, if serpents envious / Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should I
bee?" This approaches blasphemy, of course. But we must not think of
this as Donne's voice; it is the poet's way of exercising the darkest "motions
of the soul". And without this backsliding, we cannot have a progression
There is, in fact, progress within each sonnet (as there is in every individual
305
spiritual exercise in Ignatius); the fifth sonnet turns at the sestet from
blasphemy to something like contrition (though hardly repentance) when
the poet says: "But who am I, that dare dispute with thee?" This signals
the change in evidence in the last six sonnets, which contemplate salvation
through God's love and Christ's sacrifice, heralded by the colloquy with
death (sonnet six) beginning: "Death be not proud. . . ."
Ignatian exercises often will begin with images of purgation. So the
octaves of the latter six sonnets dwell on sin (corroborating my point that
the sequence as a whole moves from despair to consolation while each sonnet

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


individually describes the same course). The seventh sonnet opens with a
traditional compo&itio loci; the speaker imagines himself present at the
cruoifixion •
Spit in my face yee Jewes, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoffe, scourge, and crucifie mee,
For I have sinn'd, and sinn'd, and onely hee,
Who could do no iniquitie, hath dyed.
This leads into a consideration of the meaning of Christ's sacrifice, the sestet
being a colloquy of adoration: "Oh let mee then, his strange love still admire."
The eighth sonnet continues an exploration of the theme of redemption hi
spite of man's overwhelming sin, preparing the way for the dies irae imagined
in the ninth sonnet: "What if this present were the world's last night?"
The forceful colloquy with God in the tenth sonnet draws its pathos from
the sense of ineradicable sin which has accrued throughout the sequence.
The speaker wishes to be broken completely, so that the pieces can be welded
into a new whole. He compares himself to a town usurped by the devil; he
complains that despite his labour he cannot give himself over to his rightful
Lord. The atmosphere of spiritual combat is intense, and the martial con-
ceits employed remind us of the fourteenth rule in the first week of the
Rules for the Discernment of Spirits attached as an appendix to the Spiritual
Exercises:
The enemy's behaviour is like that of a military leader who wishes
to conquer and plunder the object of his desires. Just as the com-
mander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strength and defenses
of a fortress, and then attacks its weakest side, in like manner, the
enemy of our human nature studies from all sides our theological,
cardinal, and moral virtues. Wherever he finds us weakest and most
in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take
us by storm.6
By the time we reach the eleventh and twelfth sonnets, a certain calm
presides. Expiation has occurred. The speaker in the eleventh marks how
the Father, "having begot a Sonne most blest . . . Hath deigned to chose
thee [the poet] by adoption". The last sonnet consists of an address to God
in the Ignation manner (as a friend to a friend); the speaker claims his full
inheritance as a "son of God". These last poems, which meditate on God's
love, bring the sequence to its proper conclusion and relieve the bleakness
306

of the earlier stage of development. Our appreciation of the dramatic quality


of the "Holy Sonnets" is enhanced by the nervously regressive progress of
the soul from damnation to grace.7
In the ."Terrible Sonnets" of. Hopkins, written nearly three centuries
later, there is a similar sense of dramatic conflict. This sequence is likewise
dependent on the Ignatian structure of meditation. I am not suggesting
that Hopkins read Donne; there is no evidence for this whatever (a most
curious fact, considering Hopkins's enormous reading). But the likeness
between the two poets is striking. Both are brooding, intensely intellectual
poete with a tendency towards extreme states of mind (reflected in the

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


turbulence of their rhythms and extravagance of their imagery). Both are
poets of dramatio compression, interested in self-examination. For both,
the sonnet sequence provided the perfect stage for public meditation, for
the discernment of good and evil spirits.
Ignatius posits two contrary states in his Rules: desolation and consola-
tion. The soul may slip easily out of grace into misery, and it is difficult to
work one's way baok. But desolation may be foisted upon man by God (to
test him) or Satan' (to undermine his faith). One has to find out the source
of the present misery through meditation aid prayer. Ignatius warns that
Satan uses two basio tactics of deception; he either creates the illusion of
sensual pleasure (which rapidly gives way to despair) or tempts one into
false reasoning through pride 8 Donne, it would seem, was most tempted
by the latter in the "Holy Sonnets", which are a record of his intellectual
struggle with God. Consolation comes only after the persona gives up the
struggle and allows God his full sway. It would seem that Hopkins, in the
"Terrible Sonnets" and elsewhere, was more tempted by sensuality. Even
in his earliest work he had an awareness of the dangers of excessive indul-
gence; "The Habit of Perfection" opens with self-admonition: "Palate, the
hutch of tasty lust / Desire not to be rinsed with wine."9 Hopkins's persis-
tent ascetic strain was in constant opposition to his highly sensual nature;
one thinks of the wonderful image of the sloe in "The Wreck of the Deutsch-
land":
How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full!
This conflict in the poet, no doubt exacerbated by his priestly celibacy, was
the source of the desolation afflicting him in his last sonnets, known as "The
Terrible Sonnets".
David Downes provided a useful commentary on the Hopkins sonnet
sequence; he observed that the poet has more in common with Thomas a
Kempis, author of the influential Imitation of Christ, than Ignatius with
regard to temperament.10 The emphasis on suffering as a necessary part of
one's spiritual progress is cited. Certainly, Hopkins seems to acknowledge
307

the inevitability of suffering, but he uses the condition "of desolation in the
Ignatian manner; it purges the conscience and clears the way for the state
of consolation. I shall go so far as to suggest that the suffering represented
in the "Terrible Sonnets" is something of an affectation, a wilful exaggera-
tion of the poet's angst designed to exploit the religious (meditative) and
dramatic potential of desolation. The sequence is in effect an elaborate
recreation of the Ignatian meditation on the Discernment of Spirits.
Hopkins conceived of desolation in the Ignatian way as "darkness of the
soul, turmoil of the mind, inclination to low and earthly things, restlessness

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


resulting from many disturbances and temptations whioh lead to loss of
faith, loss of hope, loss of love".11 Ignatius adds that it is desolation when
the soul finds itself "completely apathetic, tepid, sad, and separated, as it
were, from its Creator and Lord".12 The meditator is warned not to give in
to despair but to abide by all resolutions arrived at" when previously under
the condition of grace or consolation All of this relates directly to the
"Terrible Sonnets", which naturally stand oloser to the Spiritual Exercises
than do the "Holy Sonnets".
The first of the "Terrible Sonnets" is " Carrion Comfort".13 This poem
suggests that the poet (or his persona) is faced, almost for the first time
("Spelt from Sybil's Leaves", an Ignatian meditation on hell, foreshadows
the "Terrible Sonnets") with the temptation to despair. The speaker remains
strongly opposed to giving in:
Not, I'll not carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
As in many of Donne's sonnets, a dialectio of good and evil "movements of
the soul" operates in the octave of Hopkins's poem. Again as in Donne, the
speaker courts blasphemous thoughts in the second quatrain: "But ah, but
0 thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me / Thy wring-world right foot
rock? lay a lionlimb against me?" This parallels Donne's:
Why should intent or reason, borne in mee,
Make sinnes, else equall, in mee, more heinous?
And mercy being easie, and glorious
To God, in his sterno wrath, why threatens hee?
("Holy Sonnet" 5)
Both poets use the beginning of the sestet as a pivot, retracting then-
dangerous questions, which represent false reasoning. The Christian notion
that some reasoning is "right" and some "wrong" is best explained by
Milton's Adam in Paradise Lost (IX, 351-356):
. . . God left free the Will, for what obeys
Reason, is free, and Reason he made right,
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Lest by some fair appearing good surpris'd
She dictate false, and misinform the Will
To do what God expressly hath forbid.
308

"Carrion Comfort" ends with an exchange of questions and answers. The


answers are specifically Ignatian, recalling the point in the Excercises about
suffering, that God makes us miserable "to test our worth, and the progress
that we have made in TTIH service and praise when we are without such
generous rewards of consolation and speoial graces".14 Thus, in Hopkins:
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
cheer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me,

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


foot trod.
Me? or me that fought him? 0 which one? is it each one?
That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God) my god.
The exact same argument (the wheat and the chaff) finds a parallel in Donne's
powerful tenth sonnet:
Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, 'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and me make new.
"Carrion Comfort" appears in holograph (third draft) on a page with
sonnet sixty-five (to use the editors' numbering) on the other side, the poem
beginning:
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
Again the questioning and blasphemous mode reappears. If desolation,
according to Ignatius, consists of (among other things) the loss of all hope,
then the last line of this sonnet expresses the quintessence of this wretched
state: "Life death does end and each day dies with sleep." The equation
of death with sleep occurs, similarly, in Donne's third "Holy Sonnet",
where he speaks figuratively of the last scene in his life's play when
. . . gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt
my body, and soule, and I shall sleep a space,
But my'ever-waking part shall see that face,
Whose feare already shakes my every joint.
Here, the body sleeps in the grave while the soul remains awake before the
face of a terrifying God. But surely Hopkins has framed desolation in the
more fearsome terms. He comes close to what Sir Thomas Browne referred
to as the "Arabian heresy", the notion that the soul dies with the body,
only to be revived on the last day.18
Ignatius advises one in desolation that "our Lord, in order to try him
has left him to his own natural powers to resist the different agitations and
temptations of the enemy".16 The sense of having been stranded by God is
cultivated in sonnet sixty-six of Hopkins, "To seem the stranger lies my
lot". Christ, normally the Christian's "peace", now becomes the speaker's
309
"parting, sword and strife". Whatever word of consolation he conjures up,
grace remains "dark heaven's baffling ban" and is thwarted by "hell's spell".
There seems no way out of this desolate condition. Sonnet sixty-seven
reaches even deepor into the abyss; the poet, in conversation with his own
heart, calls up images of unrelieved darkness and despair:
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, 0 what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; wayB you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


Ln the same poem, the speaker turns viciously on himself: "I am gall, I am
heartburn. God's most deep decree / Bitter would have me taste: my taste
was me." This, of course, recalls Donne's second "Holy Sonnet" which
logins: "Oh my blacke Soule!" Both poems have a common source in the
Ignatian meditation on sin and hell found in the First Week of the Exercises:
"Let me consider all my own corruption and foulness of body. Let me see
myself as a sore and an abscess from whence have come forth so many sins,
so many evils, and the most vile poison."17 Such meditations were supposed
to lead the exeroitant into rigorous self-examinations. For Ignatius, self-
knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for devotion; it follows the Biblical
exhortation to "Keep thy heart with all diligence" (Proverbs 4.24), the
bedrock of Ignatian spirituality.
Hopkins, like Donne, uses this kind of self-examination for dramatic
purposes; there is nothing quite like the wrestling of an individual conscience
with decisions of momentous consequence. Hopkins ends the sixty-seventh
sonnet with:
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
Clearly, ho does not include himself among the damned, who are far worse
off than he. This passage is crucial, to my mind, for it shows that Hopkins
had been exaggerating his own sense of damnation for the purposes of the
meditation and the dramatic quality of the sequence.
Part of the meditation on sin and death of Ignatius finds what is with-
out doubt a direct parallel in Donne's "meditation upon the creatures" in
the eighth "Holy Sonnet", as Martz pointed out.18 This shows us that
Donne did, in fact, have the Spiritual Exercises in mind when constructing
the sequence; we should also bear in mind the subtitle of the sequence, the
"Divine Meditations". Still, without these overt references, one must call
the overall movement of the "Holy Sonnets" Ignatian; the persona moves
from fear and distrust of the self and God, to confidence in both. So much
confidence has been restored by the last sonnet (twelve) that the tone might
even be considered rude by one unfamiliar with the meditative colloquy.
The argument develops with the following conceit: Christ, being part of the
Trinity and thus having a personal claim to part of the heavenly riches, by
his death has made out a "double interest" or two-fold legacy, giving his
310
"sons" equal access to the kingdom, and equal share. Donne telescopes this
complex legal conceit in the last couplet: "Thy lawes abridgement, and thy
last command / Is all but love; Oh let that last Will stand1" This alludes to
Christ's injunction. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another" (John 13:34).
The "Terrible Sonnets" trace a similar pattern; their persona moves from
fear to charity, from self-loathing to faith in God's powers of absolution and
self-esteem. The sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth sonnets provide a longed-for
relief from the preceding contemplations of sin and hell. Sixty-eight

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


('Tatience, hard thing!") reverses the direction of the sequence at a blow.
Read just after the bleak poems which go before, it comes like rainfall on a
dusty plain. In essence, the poem embodies Ignatius's eighth Rule for the
Discernment of Spirits: "One who is in desolation must persevere in patience,
which is contrary to the vexations that have come upon him."19 Hopkins
writes:
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Which is to say, patience must be won by prayer (bieten—bid for); but who
would have this virtue must suffer "war" and "wounds"—harking back to
the notion of spiritual combat found in Ignatius. The Sixth Rule advises.
"Although in desolation we should not change our earlier resolutions, it will
be very advantageous to intensify our activities against the desolation. This
can be done by insisting more on prayer, meditation, frequent examinations,
and by increasing our penance in some suitable manner."20 These are the
doings without (fastings) and tosses (set-backs) which accomplish obedience
and hasten the onset of consolation. The sonnet ends with the argument
from example: men learn patience from God, for "He is patient. Patience
fills / His orisp combs, and that comes those ways we know." God seems
hard on the surface, "crisp", but inside is that sweetness likened to the pulp
of a honeycomb.
The last sonnet of the Hopkins sequence begins:
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
The persona recognizes the need for self-charity, extending a further step
the letting up of "Patience, hard thing!" The sestet of the poem consists
of a colloquy with the self:
Soul, self; come, poor Jaokself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Between pie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
311
The poet, realizing that his tendency towards excessive self-criticism is
ultimately self-negating, advises his conscience to back away long enough
to allow consolation room for taking root. This reasoning closely follows
the Notes Concerning Scruples, a further appendix to the Spiritual Exercises.
Ignatius warns: "The enemy observes very carefully whether one has
a delicate or lax conscience. If the conscience is delicate he strives to
make it excessively so in order to disturb and ruin it more easily . . . he
strives to make it judge that there is sin where there is none, as in some
insignificant word or thought." 21

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


Hopkins concludes the sequence of meditations on sin, hell, desolation
and the Discernment of Spirits with patience and the expectation of un-
usual comfort, as when one looks down a road between mountains and the
sky suddenly unclouds and "lights a lovely mile". This metaphor of con-
solation moves towards rapture; it is the end of meditation, the confirmation
of grace, a reminder that desolation may just be God's reminder of man's
felix culpa. For Ignatius, Donne, and Hopkins, everything in life (good and
evil included) exists ad majoram dei gloriam.
In summary, both Donne and Hopkins looked to Ignatius for inspiration
and meditative discipline; to ignore this fact may lead to a serious mis-
reading of the "Holy Sonnets" or the "Terrible Sonnets". Both sequences
are confessional, but obliquely so; both have been tempered by artifioe to
heighten their dramatic intensity. Each poet has projected a version of the
self, a persona. The purpose in both oases was to recreate the interior drama
of a soul in spiritual progress from desolation to consolation; the conscience
has become a battleground where good and evil "movements of the soul"
contend for priority. One side of this is the "Discernment of Spirits", the
unravelling of the strands of one's moral life (as Father Charmont put it);
this method of self-examination leads to self-knowledge, which is both an
end in itself and a prelude to worship. By confronting the darkest side of
oneself imaginatively, one purges the soul and prepares the way for grace;
it is a form of slaying the dragon: you must first get the beast out of the
cave. Reading both sonnet sequences, there is the sense of being taken on
a journey, of winding one's way through a dark wood and coming to a
clearing at the end Along the way, new knowledge is gained, self-knowledge
(whioh according to St Bonaventure is equal to a knowledge of God). It is
only after one has experienced desolation and, through meditation, prayer,
penance and self-scrutiny, achieved consolation—that Ignatius advises:

When the enemy of our human nature has been detected and recog-
nized by his deception . . . it is well for the person who has been
tempted to examine afterward the course of the good thoughts that
were suggested to him. Let him consider their beginning and how
the enemy continued little by little to make him fall from the state
of sweetness . until he finally brought him to his perverse design.
312
With the experience and knowledge thus acquired . . . one may
better guard himself in the future against the customary deceits of
the enemy.M
JAY PABINI
Dartmouth College, U.S.A.

Downloaded from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/ at Florida Atlantic University on August 2, 2015


NOTES
1
Taken from a selection of essays from the Fronoh journal, Ohristus, edited and
translated by W. J. Young (Chicago: Regney, 19S8).
I
Louie L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven: Yale, 1954), p. 150.
•Antony F. Bellette, '"Little Little Worlds Made Cunningly': Significant Form m
Donne's Holy Sonnets and 'Goodfnday, 1613'", Studtes in Philology, July (1975), 323.
• John Donne, The Dimne Poems, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: O.U.P., 1952), pp. 1-lv.
All quotations from Donne refer to this edition.
• Ibid., pp. xl-xli. Martz dofends Miss Gardner's dating and textual arrangement of
the "Holy Sonnets". Sho dates six of the sonnets between February and August of
1609, the others shortly after. So© Marti, p. 216n.
• The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Anthony Mottola (New York; Doublo-
day, 1963), p. 132.
7
Cf. J. B. Loishman, The Monarch of Wit, 6th od. (London: Hutohinson, 1962),
p. 274.
• See Spiritual Exercises, p. 129.
• The Poems of Qerard Manley Hopkins, od. W. H. Gardner and N. H. Maokenzie,
4th ed. (London: O.U.P., 1967), p. 31. All quotations from Hopkins refer to this edition.
10
David Downes, Qerard Manley Hopkins: A Study of His Ignatian Spirit (London:
Vision Press, 1959), p. 138.
II
Spiritual Exercises, p. 130.
"Ibid., p. 131.

As Hopkins was never published in his lifetime, we cannot know if he intended
the "Terrible Sonnets" to be a sequence. But they were written at roughly the same
time and relate via subject and stylo. They are treated by Hopkins's editors as such.
14
Spiritual Exercises, p. 131.
" See Religio Medici, 1. 7.
11
Spiritual Exercises, p. 130.
" Ibid., p. 57.
" Martz, pp. 43-45.
" Spiritual Exercises, p. 130.
»Ibid.
11
Ibid., pp. 137-138.
" Ibid., p. 134.

You might also like