Representative Poetry Online
  Poet Index Poem Index Random Search
  Introduction Timeline Calendar Glossary Criticism Bibliography
  RPO Canadian Poetry UTEL
by Name
by Date
by Title
by First Line
by Last Line
Poet
Poem
Short poem
Keyword
Concordance

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life


              1To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
              2Among strangers.  Father and mother dear,
              3Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
              4And he my peace / my parting, sword and strife.

              5England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
              6To my creating thought, would neither hear
              7Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
              8Y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

              9I am in Ireland now; now I am at a third
            10Remove.  Not but in all removes I can
            11Kind love both give and get.  Only what word

            12Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven's baffling ban
            13Bars or hell's spell thwarts.  This to hoard unheard,
            14Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.

Notes

9] During the last years of his life, Hopkins was Chair of Classics at University College, Dublin, Ireland.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Later Poetic Manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Facsimile, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991): 266. PR 4803 H44A6 1991 Robarts Library
First publication date: 1918
RPO poem editor: Marc R. Plamondon
RP edition: 2006
Recent editing: 2:2006/1/11

Composition date note: Written while Hopkins was in Ireland in the last years of his life: 1884-1889.
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abba abba cdcdcd

Other poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Your comments and questions are welcomed.
All contents copyright © Ian Lancashire (Department of English) and the University of Toronto
RPO is hosted by the University of Toronto Libraries.