Abstract
"It is as a revolutionary poet that he batters at our hearts, being melter and molder' of images, churner of delight and the hot moral anguish, lord and breaker of language." | In such glowing language do many admirers of Gerard Manley Hopkins today express their regard for the gentle, self-effacing poet who lived during the Victorian age, but who was of it in no other sense. Katherine Bregy asserts that "to examine his few and scattered poems is to be convinced that the divine fire burned upon his brow, once and until the end. . . ." Another critic unqualifyingly declares that he has: | "a place apart among the poets of his time, enough [of his poems remain] to make him inexpressibly dear to those for whom beauty wears many masks, travail and despair besides joy and delight. Fame, for long avoided, at last found him out. He who feared to be Time’s eunuch has defeated Time with many a poem that both breeds and wakes."