“The Windhover”: Alone and in Context

Abstract

"T H E W IN D H O V E R ": ALO N E AN D IN CO N TEXT JO H N F E R N S McMaster University T h e Windhover" is one of the most frequently discussed poems in English literature. There are over fifty scholarly articles devoted to it.1 The titles of some of these essays, such as "Once More, 'The Windhover'," "Windhover's Meaning," "'The Windhover': A Further Simplification," suggest earnest endeavours to arrive at a single and satisfactory interpretation of the poem. They also suggest a sense of strain, as though their authors are aware that they are adding to an already prodigious body of commentary among which their own contributions may ultimately be lost. One imagines an eventual thesis that will bring all readings together under some improbable title like, "Fifty-five ways of looking at a Windhover." In his book on Hopkins, Robert Boyle, sj, suggests that there are three groups of "Windhover" critics: the simpliste, the pagan, and the Christian.2 I think it would be more useful to say that there are basically two views of the poem. One sees it simply as a poem about a bird, and the other believes that it contains a Christian meaning. My own view is that these two, frequently opposed, perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Their present exclusiveness depends upon how the poem is read; whether independent of all of Hopkins's other poems and writings, or in context. If the reader simply dons his "new critical" spectacles and casts all knowledge of Hopkins's other poetry from his mind he will probably see the poem as only a poem about a bird. This view is legitimate. It is the view that one would initially present to a class of students who were reading the poem alone, or for the first time. However, when one reads the poem in the context of Hopkins's other poems and writings, its Christian meaning, the fact that the bird is seen to be analogous to Christlikeness , becomes insistent to the point that it cannot be denied. What I think is necessary to begin with is an open admission that there are two ways of reading the poem dependent upon the situation in which one reads it. In both readings the speaker of the poem plays a crucial, yet in each a different, part. For one of the greatest causes of confusion springs from whom the speaker addresses, both within the poem itself and overall. Thus, it is necessary to examine both possible interpretations of the poem, and analyse the speaker's function in each. It is essential to have the poem before us. For the En g lish Studies in Can ad a, i , 3 (fall 1975) 3i 8 English Studies in Canada moment we must pretend that we have never seen it or heard of Hopkins and his other work before. Here is Hopkins's final version of "The Windhover": The Windhover: To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning's minion, king­ dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! a n d the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. The title of the poem, "The Windhover," states the poem's subject. The poet is initially concerned with a bird. We then come to the poem's dedication, "To Christ our Lord." The dedication does not necessarily mean that the poem is addressed to Christ, but it might. We have to bear the...