1844-89, English poet

While still in grammar school, he won a poetry prize and earned a scholarship to Oxford. One of his teachers there was Walter Pater.

His intense poems and experiments in prosody have profoundly influenced 20th-cent. poetry. Hopkins was a convert to Catholicism and a Jesuit priest, and his poems and letters often show his inner conflict and deep dissatisfaction with himself as a poet and a servant of God.

Some of his poems include:

His mature work began with The Wreck of the Deutschland and includes God's Grandeur and The Windhover.

Other related nodes:

He may or may not be laid to rest in Poets' Corner, depending on where you get your information....


Source: http://www.creighton.edu/~dcallon/Hopkins http://kildare.ie/community/Hopkins/ Last Updated 05.14.04

Born in 1844, died in 1889. He was educated at Oxford, entered the Catholic Church in 1866, began his novitiate with the Jesuits in 1868, and was ordained in 1877. Upon entering the Jesuit order, he burned most of his existing poetry.

In 1875, a German ship, the Deutschland, sank, carrying five Franciscan nuns with it. This inspired him to write The Wreck of the Deutschland, and he continued writing poetry until his death.

A friend and contemporary of Robert Bridges. Most of each of their contributions to prosody and poetic rhythm were developed between the two. I am more familiar with Bridges than with Hopkins, but I know they employed similar rhythmic techniques, though Hopkins' subject matter was intense, emotional, and religious, whereas Bridges' was idyllic and aesthetic.

Hopkins achieved the height of his success upon Robert Bridges' posthumous publication of a collection of Hopkins' poetry.

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