The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
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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! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
"The Windhover" is a sonnet written in 1887 by the English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, dedicated to "Christ our Lord." In the poem, the speaker recounts the awe-inspiring sight of a kestrel (a.k.a, a "windhover") soaring through the air in search of prey. The speaker is deeply moved by the bird's aerial skill—its ability to both hover in stillness and swoop down with speed—and sees the bird as an expression of the beauty and majesty of God's creation. The poem's octet (the first eight lines) concentrates primarily on the bird, while the sestet—the second and final section of the poem—discusses the creature in a wider religious context. The speaker ultimately stresses that such beauty is in fact "no wonder," because all of God's creation is divinely beautiful.
Summary
This morning I was lucky enough to see a flying falcon, which seemed to me to be the morning's favorite creature, a prince of daylight with speckled feathers. He was riding the rolling air currents way up high. He seemed full of pure joy as he controlled the wind like a horse-rider does a horse. After hovering almost motionless, the bird suddenly dove in a smooth arc, like that of a skater's heel cleaning sweeping across the ice. The way the bird dove and glided revealed its authority over the strong wind. Watching the bird moved me profoundly—the bird's flight evidence of its sheer mastery and achievement!
All these different attributes meet together in this bird—beauty, honor, action, air and feathers all in one! But your fire, Christ, burns even more brightly, powerfully, and beautifully. Oh Christ, my knight in shining armor!
The bird was nothing special when you really think about it—even hard and boring work like plowing a field makes the upturned soil glitter and shine beautifully. And hot coals, fallen from a fire my lord, break open to reveal their beautiful red and golden colors.
Themes
The Majesty of God and Nature
“The Windhover” is a celebration—even, perhaps, a kind of joyous prayer—that marvels at the wonders of the natural world and, in turn, at the majesty of God’s creation. The poem strives to show that these two aspects of the world—nature and God—are not really separate: the beauty of nature is both evidence of and a way of experiencing God’s sublime divinity.
The poem uses one small part of the nature—a falcon (specifically a kestrel)—to explore this relationship, with “the achieve of [and] the mastery” of the bird representing one small but undeniable proof of God’s power. The first chunk of the poem brings nature to life on the page, while the latter half then develops the way that natural beauty relates to God.
In the octet (the poem's first eight lines) the poem’s speaker is almost overcome by the beauty of the falcon. The poem’s language is fittingly full of its own dazzling beauty here (through poetic techniques like alliteration), as the speaker tries breathlessly to capture the experience of the falcon. Indeed, the emotional impact of this encounter is clear from the start: “I caught this morning morning’s minion,” the speaker says. If part of the speaker’s wonder at the falcon is its sheer and beautiful physical efficiency, the notion of “catching” it in flight shows that this is a rare—and profound—experience.
The speaker then marvels at different features of the falcon, each one of them majestic in its own way. The falcon’s “dapple[d]” feathers, its ability to smoothly hover in the strong air currents, the way it swiftly turns and dives (presumably to catch prey)—all of these affect the speaker profoundly. This emotional reaction comes about because the speaker sees in the falcon—in its incredible falcon-ness (that is, the way it perfectly inhabits being a falcon)—as proof of God’s existence, beauty, and power.
In other words, the falcon doesn’t just exist for the sake of it—it exists to express God’s will. The falcon’s incredible aerial ability and seemingly perfect (divine) design stands in for God’s masterful achievement in creating the world and all the beauty contained within it.
With the first part of the poem having proved the beauty of the falcon, the sestet (the final six lines of the sonnet) places the bird in a wider and arguably more mysterious context. The speaker admires the falcon’s “brute beauty and valour and act” (its fearlessness and physical abilities), but importantly sees these as proof of a type of metaphorical “fire” that also "breaks" from Christ, to whom the poem is dedicated. This fire is God’s creation. Think about it as a kind of molten lava flowing underneath the surface of all (seemingly individual) things—and making them part of one perfect whole. The fire, according to the speaker, is the source of all existence and is stunningly beautiful.
And it’s here the speaker makes the poem’s final but crucial point. This “fire” isn’t just perceptible in things that are obviously beautiful and impressive (like the bird, or, perhaps, a spectacular view); the fire of creation burns brightly within all things. Like embers fallen from a fire, even unremarkable surroundings can contain intense, “gold-vermillion” beauty. As an example, the speaker mentions the mundane and repetitive task of plowing the soil, which brings the reward of food and sustenance. A secondary, less literal meaning of this "sheer plod" could be the way that human beings serve God by staying true to their spiritual development. That is, even if the rewards of doing so don’t seem immediately obvious, or if the spiritual path seems fraught with difficulty, sheer effort forms an important part of the expression of God’s creation. Like the falcon’s full-hearted expression of falcon-ness, humans serve God through seeking him.
황조롱이
우리 주 그리스도께
나는 오늘 아침, 아침의 총아를 보았다. 태양 왕국의
황태자, 얼룩진 새벽에 이끌려 날아온 매.
날개 아래 흐르듯 펼쳐진 수평, 안정된 대기를 유영하며.
저기 드높이 날아 올라. 물결치는 날개 고뼈 당기는
저 황홀한 모습 이라니! 높이 저 높이 서 휘돌아,
스케이트 뒤축처럼 부드럽게 반원을 그리며 세차게 당겨진 활시위 마냥 날아가며 미끄러진다. 세찬 바람을 가르며. 숨어 지켜보는 내 가슴은,
한 마리 새로 인해 감동으로 떨린다-저 창조물의 완벽한 기술의 성취!
야생의 아름다움과 힘 그리고 몸짓, 오, 위풍과 긍지. 영광이
날개 짓 안에있다! 그리고 그대에게서 터져 나오는 불꽃은 소문보다
억만 갑절 더 아름답고 더 무섭구나, 오 나의 기사여!
놀라 울 일도 아니다 ; 열심히 밭고랑을 갈면
빛나 듯, 푸르스름히 타다 남은 재, 아, 그대여,
하강하며, 불꽃튀며 쓸리는 황금빛 주홍 상처여.
1. 그리스도를 찬송
2. Hopkins의 독특한 Sprung Rhythm이 구사된 Sonnet
3. 고어(old English)와 언어의 변용을 사용
4. 14행의 소네트 형식 -> 앞의 8행의 각운이 모두 –ing로 끝난다.
5. 독창적 운율을 통해 매의 부드럽고 힘찬 비행을 효과적으로 표현했다. -> 첫 8행은 각 행마다 강세 5개, 약음의 수는 불규칙적 / 강세의 이중표기 / 하이픈으로 단어연결 / 한 단어를 둘로 나누어 연결
* 해설
1. 황조롱이가 하늘을 나는 모습도 아름답지만 그보다 그리스도의 정신이 더 아름답고 찬란하다고 그리스도의 영광을 강조
2. 황조롱이는 공중에서 배회하는 습성 때문에 windhover라고 불린다.
3. 새의 황홀한 비행을 바라보며 시인의 마음 동요 -> 새에게서 아름다움과 용맹, 긍지 발견 -> 여기서 자연 속에 현존하는 신의 모습을 발견
4. 첫 8행은 매로 표현되는 자연의 아름다운 찬양 + 다음 6행에서는 물질적(자연) 미를 초월하는 정신적 세계의 미를 찬미한다.
5. 성직자로 속세에서 벗어나 조용히 살던 시인은 매의 황홀한 비행을 보고 신의 영광을 깨우친다. -> 매의 아름다운 비행은 고통을 통해 완성된 것을 깨달으며 예수의 십자가 수난을 암시한다.