ellauri095.html on line 55: Hopkins did live such a life, but the windhover reminded him of Jesus’ great achievements after Nazareth. The windhover “stirred” his desire to become a great knight of faith, one of those who imitate not only the constraint but also the “achieve of, the mastery of” this great chevalier. The “ecstasy” of the windhover recalls Hopkins’s initial desire in “Il Mystico” to be lifted up on “Spirit’s wings” so “that I may drink that ecstasy/Which to pure souls alone may be.” Ultimately, Hopkins became aware that he had been hiding from the emotional risks of total commitment to becoming a “pure” soul. The phrase “hiding” thus suggests not only hiding from the world or from worldly ambition but also hiding from God.
ellauri095.html on line 546: The phrase “And birds that call/Hoarse to the storm,” invites comparison with the son’s images of the windhover rebuffing the big wind in “The Windhover” (1877) and with the image of the great storm fowl at the conclusion of “Henry Purcell” (1879). The father’s prophecy, “thy sport is with the storm/To wrestle” is fulfilled in Gerard’s The Wreck of the Deutschland and “The Loss of the Eurydice” (1878). These two shipwreck poems, replete with spiritual instruction for those in doubt and danger were the son’s poetic and religious counterparts to his father’s 1873 volume, The Port of Refuge, or advice and instructions to the Master-Mariner in situations of doubt, difficulty, and danger.
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