The Windhover – Full Text Of Poem Written By Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Windhover – Full Text Of Poem Written By Gerard Manley Hopkins

THE WINDHOVER – In this topic, we are going to read the full text of the poem The Windhover written by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

As mentioned above, it is a sonnet that was written by an English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is also a Jesuit priest.

The sonnet was published in 1918 in the collection Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The Windhover is an alternate name for a bird of prey species called common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and refers to the kestrel’s ability to hover in midair while hunting prey.

Here is the full text of the poem uplifted from Poetry Foundation:

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

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