There are other, stranger threads interwoven; but this is the chief.
Swinburne, rightly enough if the intention of true song is considered,
appears hardly to have existed for Hopkins, though he was his
contemporary. There is an element of Keats in his epithets, a half-echo
in 'whorled ear' and 'lark-charmed'; there is an aspiration after
Milton's architectonic in the construction of the later sonnets and the
most lucid of the fragments,'Epithalamion.' But the central point of
departure is the 'Skylark.' The 'May Magnificat' is evidence of
Hopkins's achievement in the direct line:--
'Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?--
Growth in everything--
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle-blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within....
... When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple,
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfed cherry,
And azuring-over graybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes,
And magic cuckoo-call
Caps, clears, and clinches all.
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