“Spring” (A Few Words for Wednesday)

Like me, Webster is partial to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 19th century poet who also was a Catholic convert and a Jesuit. (Depicted here bronze by Irish sculptor Rowan Gillsepie).  Webster has cited Hopkins’s poems  here, here and here.

Poems are meant to be read out loud; this is especially true for Hopkins’s. He used “sprung rhythm,” which is intended to sound like natural speech. (Unlike most poets who use free verse, however, Hopkins made sure the number of feet per line of poetry was kept consistent within a single poem.)

At a funeral I attended Saturday, the celebrant, Msgr. John Mraz, mentioned Hopkins. The deceased, Donald Patton Buckelew, like Hopkins, not only encountered Christ in the Mass, but also in his fellow human beings and in the natural world. What a gift.