Gerard Manley Hopkins Book Club

I offically call to order the first meeting of the GMH (Gerard Manley Hopkins) Book Club. I happen to be the only member at this present moment (with a potential second in the wings), but I hope for comments and participation.

I was introduced to G.m.H. sometime in high school–don’t remember exactly when–but his poetry became most effective when I first read his poem “The Windhover” for a college seminar class. I ended up writing a paper on Hopkins’s style and theological influences….but that is besides the point. The point of this little “book club” will be to read through Hopkins’s poetry and analyze them for their metaphorical and theological wealth. Eventually, I would like to find similar writers to throw into the mix, but we’ll start with Hopkins (since he’s the best!).

Today’s poem is relevant to me because 1) I am recently married and 2) it seems like everyone I know (my age) is getting married!

At the Wedding March (1918)

GOD with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other’s comfort kind:
Déep, déeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríumph and immortal years.

This is a heartfelt prayer for blessings upon the marriage of a young couple on their wedding day.
The blessing for the bride: beautiful babies! (“lissome scions, sweet scions” – literally, elegant heirs). To the groom, Hopkins attributes “honour”–an interesting term, but applicable I think when you consider the word as a reference to fulfilling the duties of the head of a household, and the ensuing blessings of living as such.

In the second stanza, I love the typical Hopkins reversal of terms: “comfort kind” as opposed to “kind comfort”. This makes you look more closely at the terms, both separately and as descriptive of each other. The use of the word “charity”, repeated in the second stanza is important for the transition to the third stanza. Hopkins is referring not only to the attitude necessary for both husband and wife to continue in a loving relationship, but the love from which all other love stems–the charity of God. Wikipedia (go figure!) tells us: “In Christian theology charity, or love (agapē), means an unlimited loving-kindness toward all others.” What better emotion than agape can describe the charitable love of God by which extension we are enable to experience the love of marriage between man and woman?

In the third stanza we find the theological twist that Hopkins always likes to make: even as the bride is heading down the aisle, Hopkins (the narrator) envisions the bridegroom Christ, whose “wonder wedlock” to the church (his bride) results in triumph over sin and death, and thus everlasting fellowship in a relationship of agape with those to whom he is “wedded”. Hopkins here expresses his own gratitude for the immense charity and sacrifice of this relationship with Christ; at the same time beautifully realizing the metaphor for Christ’s relationship with the church in the relationship of marriage.

Read it through again with this thought in mind: We love because He first loved us. With this tri-fold example of the relationship between man and wife, Christ and the church, and Christ and the saved sinner, Hopkins manifest in three stanzas how we ought to go about our relationships in life.