Gerard Manley Hopkins by Paul Mariani

Author:Paul Mariani
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T04:30:00+00:00

Who have watched his mould of man, big-bóned and hardy-handsome

Pining, píning, till time when reason rámbled in it, and some

Fatal four disorders, fléshed there, all contended?

And so it is with death, no matter how many of the dying he has watched over. He remembers how “Sickness broke him,” and how Felix had cursed at first, unwilling to believe that someone as strong as himself could succumb to a wasting consumption. But Hopkins had also seen Felix change under his ministering, his anointing him with the oil of the sick, offering the “sweet reprieve” of confession, and the “ransom” of holy communion “Téndered to him”: Christ’s gift of himself as payment, as legal tender offered most tenderly. And then the Lancashire blessing and farewell: “Áh well, God rést him áll road éver he offénded!” Life as a journey—the age-old metaphor—a plodding on of our days, like workhorses in the daily grinding going round. And then the surprising, transfiguring end, as Felix’s “more boisterous years” give way to suffering, and suffering to a new creation, “When thou at the random grím fórge, pówerful amídst péers / Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright & battering sandal!”

The reverence of that “thou,” the address at the end as Felix enters the great mystery. And so, what Felix did for his great grey drayhorses drumming the cobbled streets of Liverpool, Hopkins has been privileged to do for Felix. In its closing lines, the poem circles back to Felix’s prime, at the same time crossing the threshold of a mystery as Felix enters his new life with bright and battering sandals, his sacramental armor, the image of the horseshoe signaling the Omega, the true end point, and Felix, like his name, truly blessed now, going forth to meet his God.

No doubt Hopkins feels very much like a drayhorse himself these many months, exhaustion setting in, his daily round to be at the beck and call of his superiors, his congregation, the sick, those in the workhouses, the demands of the Lightbounds and other Catholic families. That same week he tells his mother he is “knocked up” with work and illness, “the work of Easter week (worse than Holy Week)” being especially hard, on top of which he has been suffering “with a bad cold, which led to earache and deafness.” Even now he has no strength, and as long as he remains in Liverpool he does not see how he will ever fully regain his strength.

Here too, as at Oxford, there are so many poor Italian families, where the men eke out livings as “organ grinders” or selling ices, that he wonders how those who have known the Neapolitan or Tuscan sun can bear this awful, wintry, smog-laden Liverpool air. So far, he has seen nothing of spring “but some leaves in streets and squares. It is good, and all advise it, to get out of town and breathe fresh air at New Brighton”—the seaside beaches six miles off—“or somewhere else,” but he has had no time yet to get away.

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