A Wonderful Lover of Nature:
G. M. Hopkins like the great romantic poets of the early nineteenth century is a wonderful lover of Nature. His poem “A Vision of the Mermaids” reminds us of the sensuous love of Keats’ poetry where the latter has given sensuous pictures of Nature. In this poem there are the vivid picture of the sunset, rich and coloured pictures of flowers, waters and other objects of Nature. Throughout his life Hopkins has been a profound lover of plants, trees, clouds, birds, waters and hills etc. In his word - painting he equals Ruskin. In the descriptions of natural objects he is fascinated by the special aspects of a thing which form its individually - distinctive beauty the very essence of its beauty. For this unified pattern of essential attributes he coined the word “inscape”, and to that stress or energy of being which holds the inscape together he gave the name “instress”. These two coinages were primarily intended by the poet to describe his awareness of a divine pattern and power at work in Nature.
His wide - ranging love to Nature:
Hopkins’ love for Nature was wide - ranging. If, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, he was fascinated by the static and everyday aspects of Nature, he was also, like Shelley and Byron, greatly attracted by high winds, storms, oceans and other wild and dynamic aspects of Nature. If, like Keats, he exulted in the sensuous beauty of Nature, he also, like Wordsworth, found a mystical significance in Nature. However, he went beyond Wordsworth in so far as he actually saw God and Christ in Nature, while Wordsworth only felt a divine presence permeating every object of Nature. A critic remarks, “Noteworthy also is the fact that Nature is to Hopkins a revelation of God in a sense more profound than it was to Romantics, not excluding Wordsworth.” He writes:
“Since, tho’ he is under the world's splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed.”
Hopkins has a deep enthusiasm for Nature. He observes in “God's Grandeur”. “There lives the dearest freshness deep down the things”. He writes delightfully in “The Starlight Night”, “Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies.”
Vivid Nature - imagery:
Hopkins has mastery over the resources of language and love for Nature that enables him to give vivid and beautiful pictures of Nature. A snowstorm with its force and ferocity has been effectively described in the following lines:
“Wiry and white - fiery and whirlwind - swivelled snow spins …
The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock
X X X X
And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her... ….. …… ……”
The flight of the “dapple - dawn drawn falcon” in The Windhover, pictures of the sea - waves and skylark's song in The Sea And the Skylark, and the “silk - sack clouds” and “the azurous hung hills” in Hurrahing in Harvest are memorable and marvellous.
Nature as revelation of God:
Nature attracts Hopkins not only for its beauty, its splendour and grandeur, its tremendous force and power but also because it reveals God to us in all its manifestations. Hopkins is a priest poet but he does tag a moral to a Nature - poem as a matter of priestly duty. Hopkins’ vision of God is integral to his vision of Nature. He simply cannot help seeing God or Christ in Nature. As soon as he watches Nature h himself face to face with God, sometimes benign and sometimes wrathful, but ultimately he finds kind mercy of God even in His anger or punishment. In “Carrion Comfort” he kisses the punitive rod of Christ and knows well that behind His rod there is the merciful hand of Christ or God that is to purify him of his imperfections.
“... …. …. … kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, sole joy, would laugh, cheer.”
In “The Wreck of the Deutschland” also the wrath of God is a kind of mercy. In this poem the poet kisses his hand to the stars and starlight and to de dappled with damson west , seeing God “under the world's splendour and wonder”, and says that God's mercy must be “instressed, stressed”, that is perceived and proclaimed. The poet calls God “master of the tides, of the yor - flood, of the year's fall”.
Conclusion:
The poet, in his nature poems or in poems where natural images are used, is concerned with the sensuous beauty of Nature and his ardent belief in Catholic Christianity. These poems reveal the presence of a God of infinite goodness and beauty in Nature and they are full of excited joy at the meaning and reality given to Nature by this religious concept. The romantic poets Shelley and Wordsworth saw the presence of a divine spirit in objects of Nature while Hopkins saw God or Christ in all Nature.
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