12 August 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 2
To His Watch
Mortal my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time's some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die—
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.
Field-flown, the departed day no morning brings
Saying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse,
And then that last and shortest…
About the author:
1844-89. Gerard Manley Hopkins was ordained in 1877, after joining the Jesuit novitiate in 1868. In 1882 he became a teacher at Mount St. Mary's College, Sheffield, and Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, from where he progressed to professor of Greek at University College Dublin, though remaining a priest.
While most of his contemporaries were using running Norman rhythms in their poems, Hopkins adopted the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon verse, such as in Beowulf. Hopkins called it sprung rhythm, allowing irregularly up to four and as little as one syllable per foot, with an accent on the first syllable. During his lifetime, Hopkins published few of his poems. It was only through the efforts of his friend, Bridges, that his collected verse was published in 1918.
Learn more about the life and work of Gerard Manley Hopkins at Wikipedia.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Gerard Manley Hopkins at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 5, No. 2, where "To His Watch" ran on August 12, 2005. List other work with these same labels: poetry, classic, rhyme.
