For Gerard Manley Hopkins, the wilderness – especially in spring – was his dark, unforgiving city. A place not of pain and suffering but of rejuvenation and resurrection. Despite his reputation as a lacklustre preacher, an uninspiring teacher and an eccentric priest, Hopkins was a radically gifted poet of unparalleled vision.
The wilderness of nature was the God-created world in all of its purity and strangeness – creation unbridled. The perfect fodder for a poet who sought to stretch language to capture the ineffable and channel the Holy Spirit. To Hopkins, nature is something both ancient and unchanging; it is both material and metaphor for Christ, who Hopkins envisioned as a transcendent spirit whose incarnation revealed truth.
