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THE
ANALOGICAL
MIRRORS
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HIS MIRRORS
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324
IEW
REV
KENYON
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For if
ence.
Hopkins habitually shifts his gaze from the order and perspectives of nature to the analogous but grander scenery of the
moral and intellectual order. And he does this methodically:
. . . 0 the mind,mindhasmountains;cliffsof fall
Frightful,sheer,no-man-fathomed.
Or the book of nature provides parallel passages with the supernatural revelations of Scripture:
. . .For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the featuresof men's faces.
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KENYON
REV
IEW
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him steadyair,andstriding
Of the rollinglevel underneath
High there,how he runguponthe reinof a wimplingwing
In his ecstasy!then off, off forthon swing,
As a skate'sheel sweepssmoothon a bow-bend:the hurl and
gliding
Rebuffedthe big wind. Myheartin hiding
Stirredfor a bird,-the achieveof, the masteryof the thing!
Brutebeautyandvalourandact,oh, air,pride,plume,here
Buckle!AND the firethatbreaksfromtheethen,a billion
0 mychevalier!
Timestold lovelier,moredangerous,
No wonderof it: sheerplodmakesploughdownsillion
Shine,and blue-bleakembers,ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves,andgashgold-vermilion.
The bird "literally" mirrors the physical order of sub-rational
"valour and act." But, analogously, as "kingdom of daylight's
dauphin," it mirrors Christ. As Hopkins transfers his gaze from
the first mirror to the second, we see that his own heart is also
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HIS MIRRORS
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KENYON
REV
IEW
just the opposite of their usual functions in Hopkins' versethe opposite of "gall" and "gash" in the last line, for example.
Here, in conjunction with the even phrasing, they convey the
delicate poise, the hovering emphasis of the falcon's movements.
The falcon is seen as a chevalier, a horsemanglorying in the great
power under him and the quick response to the rein as he sweeps
"forth on swing." (The skate on ice image shifts the point of
view only to stress the precision and sharplyetched movementsof
the bird. Compare: "It is the forged feature finds me" in "Henry
Purcell." "Dapple- dawn- drawn Falcon" also insists upon the
etched quality of the scene. The bird is drawn to the light but
it is also drawn, etched, against the dawn.)
To a memberof a militant order whose founder was a Spanish
soldier or chevalier, the feudal characterof the opening imageryis
quite natural. "Minion," "dauphin," "valour," "plume," and
"buckle"alike evoke the world of dedicatedknighthood and shining panoply of armor. Thus the mounted chevalier flashing off
exploit as he "rung upon the rein" enables Hopkins later to reverse the situation with great dramaticeffect in "sheerplod makes
plow down sillion shine." The paradox consists in the fact that
Hopkins as lowly plowman following a horse flashes off infinitely
more exploit than Hopkins the imagined chevalier.
More central still to the dramatic movement of the poem
is the way in which the cavalier images of the octet are concentrated in "here Buckle!" Buckling is the traditionalgesture of the
knight preparing his armor for action. A buckler is the bright
shield of defense bearing insignia, flashing defiance. (The relevance of the sense of "buckle" as "collapse" or "crumple"has
often been debated in this context. It has been suggested that
Hopkins, in shifting his point of view, here means that the sensuous beauty of the world is a feeble prop, that he is making a conventional renunciation of "mortal beauty" as dangerous to the
spiritual life. But this is to ignore the dramatic development, to
blur it with cliche. It ignores the excited emphasis of "here" at
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HIS MIRRORS
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the end of the line and "Buckle!" at the beginning of the next.
It is, of course, almost impossible not to accept these suggestions
so long as the basic mirror images of his analogist vision are not
grasped.) Whichever way one looks at this image the implication of shining brilliance, of enthusiastic gesture, is present. I
have already said that "here"means "in the obedient and humble
heart," and that "Buckle" means that the "brute beauty" of the
bird as mirror of God's grandeur is to be transferred or flashed
to the "heart in hiding," just as the burnishedsurface of the plow
in action is hidden in the earth. 'The high-spirited but obedient
heart of a man is a "billion Times" better a mirrorof Christ the
chevalier than is the mirror of the external world. "AND the
fire that breaks from thee then" (note how the eager stress on
"AND" serves to flash attention intensely on what follows as
being an inevitable result )is ambivalent in suggesting both the
fire and ecstacy which the poet has felt as he watched the bird
as well as the much greater fire which Christ will flash on him
and from him, and which will flame out at the world. The mirror of man's moral life can "give beauty back to God," the beauty
of God's world, and in so doing it becomes the mirror in which
(by the imitation of Christ) God can flash out more brilliantly.
("Give beauty back," as in a mirror, is also the theme of "The
Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo," as the title suggests.)
Once it is seen that the shining armor of the falcon's imitation of Christ'smasteryis to be buckled in the hidden heart of the
poet it is easy to find other passages in Hopkins which show that
this image obsessessed him. In the sonnet to St. Alphonsus Rodriguez there is the same running image of military brilliance and
valor:
But be the war within, the brandwe wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earthhears no hurtle then from fiercestfray.
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330
KENYON
REVIEW
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HIS MIRRORS
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This "Jack, joke" plodding behind the plough makes the trash
and mud of earth shine like diamond, "wafting him out of it."
And diamond flashing from the silicates of the soil is also, once
again, the mirror of Christ in the hidden and humble heart of
mortal clay.
Another aspect of this analogy of the plough grinding
through the gritty soil is seen in the last line of "Spelt from Sybil's
Leaves":
Where, selfwrung,selfstrung,sheathe-and shelterless,thoughts
againstthoughtsin groansgrind.
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KENYON
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This aspect of the plough and the soil is the more obviously
dramatic one-immortal beauty won from the harshest dullest
toil, suffering,and discipline.
An inevitable dispersal of attention has accompanied the
above elucidation of this poem. But then only an oral reading with all the freedom and flexibility of spoken discussion can
really point to the delicate interaction, at each moment of the
poem, of all its cumulativevitality of logic, fancy, musicalgesture.
"The Windhover" could never have become the richly complex poem it is if Hopkins had not tested and explored all its
themes beforehand, in other poems. There is no other poem of
comparable length in English, or perhaps in any language, which
surpasses its richness and intensity or realized artistic organization. There are two or three sonnets of Shakespeare(for example,
"They that have power to hurt" and "The expense of spirit")
which might be put with Donne's "At the round earth's"for comparison and contrast with this sonnet. But they are not comparable with the range of the experience and multiplicity of integrated perception which is found in "The Windhover."
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