Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.

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