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Views from the Choir Loft

Gerard Manley Hopkins & Beauty

Fr. David Friel · October 27, 2013

NE OF THE THINGS that I found most memorable in the recent papal interview was his off-the-cuff response to a question about his preferences among artists and writers. The Holy Father gave a rather detailed, albeit spontaneous, response, which indicates to me that he has a truly wide appreciation for culture and the arts. Off the top of his head, he named (and even quoted) the following favorites: Dostoevsky, Hölderlin, Manzoni, Hopkins, Cervantes, Caravaggio, Chagall, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner. In some instances, he even specified particular recordings, singers, or conductors.

It thrilled me to read that Pope Francis is a lover of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the imitable Jesuit poet of nineteenth-century England. It also surprised me greatly. It seems apparent that our Holy Father has little facility in the English language, and poetry such as Hopkins’ could never be successfully translated. His reliance on assonance, alliteration, and sprung rhythm would make the work of translating Hopkins nearly impossible. The pontiff doesn’t explain how he came to be a Hopkins fan, but I do find that revelation encouraging.

O MANY OF HOPKINS’ POEMS treat of beauty that the subject could rightly be considered a recurring theme. Two poems, in particular, make an interesting point about the intended direction of beauty. For Hopkins, beauty is something to be rendered unto God. He never denies that the Lord is the source of all things bright and beautiful, yet the poet proposes beauty as something to be simultaneously & mysteriously returned to Him. This work of handing over beauty to God appears, in a number of poems, to be one of the duties of man.

Consider first the opening stanza of Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice:

The dappled die-away
Cheek and the wimpled lip,
The gold-wisp, the airy-grey
Eye, all in fellowship—
This, all this beauty blooming,
This, all this freshness fuming,
Give God while worth consuming.

The stipulation “while worth consuming” reminds me of the Gospel story about the widow’s mite, wherein the Lord instructs us to give not only from our surplus, but even from our need. We are to offer the beautiful things of this world to God now, while they are still beautiful, not sometime in the future when all their beauty has faded away. In Hopkins words, “What death half lifts the latch of, What hell hopes soon the snatch of, Your offering, with dispatch, of!

Another masterful poem, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, opens with a search for how to retain beauty. In a world of “ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay,” how does one “keep back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?”

Later on, the one whose voice speaks in the poem (presumably Hopkins?) changes focus. No longer does he ask how to “keep back beauty.” The question becomes how best to give beauty back.

Hopkins uses the image of gorgeous hair to make this point:

Sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs, deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.

What a lovely appellation for God: “beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.” When we make this fundamental shift—from retaining beauty to giving it away—the extraordinary happens:

See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.

One of my prized books is the complete poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. In every poem, Hopkins proves himself both a master of the craft and a man of keen Christian insight. They have nourished me, along with so many other Hopkins fans—including even the pope.

As Hopkins once said in a dialogue with an Oxford scholar: “Beauty therefore is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.” The poetic mind is one capable of drawing and elucidating those comparisons. Glory be to God for the poetic mind given to Hopkins!

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Beauty, Pope Francis Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    Luis Martínez Must Go!
    Sevilla Cathedral (entry dated 13 December 1564): The chapter orders Luis Martínez, a cathedral chaplain, to stay away from the choirbook-stand when the rest of the singers gather around it to sing polyphony—the reason being that “he throws the others out of tune.” [Excerpt from “The Life of Father Francisco Guerrero.”]
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Urgent! • We Desperately Need Funds!
    A few days ago, the president of Corpus Christi Watershed posted this urgent appeal for funds. Please help us make sure we’re never forced to place our content behind a paywall. We feel it’s crucial that 100% of our content remains free to everyone. We’re a tiny 501(c)3 public charity, entirely dependent upon the generosity of small donors. We have no endowment and no major donors. We run no advertisements and have no savings. We beg you to consider donating $4.00 per month. Thank you!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
    I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Pope Pius XII Hymnal?
    Have you ever heard of the Pope Pius XII Hymnal? It’s a real book, published in the United States in 1959. Here’s a sample page so you can verify with your own eyes it existed.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    “Hybrid” Chant Notation?
    Over the years, many have tried to ‘simplify’ plainsong notation. The O’Fallon Propers attempted to simplify the notation—but ended up making matters worse. Dr. Karl Weinmann tried to do the same in the time of Pope Saint Pius X by replacing each porrectus. You can examine a specimen from his edition and see whether you agree he complicated matters. In particular, look at what he did with éxsules fílii Hévae.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed

Random Quote

“This chapter hereby extends the prohibition of 13 June 1561 against loaning singers or instrumentalists on any account whatsoever to include even the humblest choirboy.” [From “The Life of Father Francisco Guerrero.”]

— Sevilla: Chapter Resolution (10 June 1562)

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Corpus Christi Watershed is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to exploring and embodying as our calling the relationship of religion, culture, and the arts. This non-profit organization employs the creative media in service of theology, the Church, and Christian culture for the enrichment and enjoyment of the public.

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