Pied Beauty Essay

Claire Robinson has an M.A. in English. She is a writer and editor and a former teacher of English literature and creative writing. In the following essay, she examines how Hopkins uses the poetic techniques of the oral traditions of Anglo-Saxon and traditional Welsh poetry to express his meaning in “Pied Beauty.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s experimentation with the poetic techniques of Anglo-Saxon and Welsh poetry was entirely geared to his intention that his poems be read aloud with the ear, not on the page with the eye. In a letter of August 21, 1877 to Robert Bridges (cited in Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works), he writes, “My verse is less to be read than heard . . . it is oratorical, that is the rhythm is so.” In another letter to Bridges in 1886 (cited by Paul L. Mariani in A Commentary on the Complete...