G. M. Hopkins

Hopkins is a unique figure in the history of English Poetry. While still at school, Hopkins was already writing poetry expressing his intense appreciation of natural beauty in Keatsian manner. At Oxford, when he was thrown into the midst of the religious conflicts of the 1860’s, an ascetic streak in his make-up became more apparent. In 1875, when his long training as a Jesuit was reaching its end, he broke his self-imposed silence with the “Wreck of the Deutschland”, a great ode occasioned by the sinking in a storm of the Deutschland, which had on board five nuns, refugees from religious persecution. Hopkins continued to write poetry until the end of his life.