Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur:
In the beginning of this poem the speaker is letting us know that god is present here on Earth and this his presence is strong. He uses the metaphor of light shinning from a foil and the great power that has. When you think of light shining off of foil, it can go in all directions and make all sorts of different shapes and figures. The foil can be wrinkled up and the light can bounce of in all directions or it could be flat and it could bounce straight back like a reflection. The reason I believe he chose to use foil here is to say that god is everywhere and god is such a strong force. This force could be bad, however this force could be bad if we angry god. Then he compares God to "It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/ Crushed" 3-4. Here he is referring to how great god can be. In order to get oil out of seeds the seed must be crushed at a certain pressure. This is like saying that in order to get greatness out of God that a person must put in a certain amount of work for him. Then he is confused as to why people still misbehave and are not afraid of his reign. "Why do mean then now not reck his rod?"4.
In the next section he is referring to nature. This would be typical of Hopkins because he focused on nature and god throughout all of his poems. What is he trying to say in this second stanza is that in the current day society (being back in the early 1900's) that people do not appreciate the beauty of nature. He says, "And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil/ And wears man's smell: the soil/ Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. (6-8) Right here he is blaming industry and factories for tearing up nature to build and produce their goods. He feels that these are taking away from nature and are an ugly eye sore. He feels that people have become unsensitive to nature and do not have any appreciation left for it. This is very troublesome to the speaker who sees so much beauty and greatness in nature.
In the last stanza he sort of changes his tone a bit. He reassures that nature will still continue trying to grow and be beautiful and that it is just waiting after each night. He also lets us know that since god is forgiving he is going to forgive us for what we have done to nature, but we need to be aware of it. Nature is going to keep coming back because it is deep in this world, and it represents freshness and good.
The Windhover:
In this poem once again the speaker is pointing out the beauty in nature. He finds the bird flying to be very beautiful and ponders how the bird was able to learn such a trait. In fact, he compares the bird flying to someone riding and being able to control the ride. Why would the speaker be so interested in this bird flying though besides just the beauty of it? I believe that the speaker became so obsessed with the perfection of the birds fligth that possibly he started to realize something about his own life. The speaker may realize that he is not putting his all into whatever it is that he does. I got this interpretation from the lines "My heard in hiding/ Stirred for a bird, -the acheve of, the mastery of the thing!" 7-8. He points out that to be able to acheive such perfection at something is so amazing. Maybe the speaker wants to do the same thing in his own life. Maybe, the speaker does not think he could ever acheive such perfection, and realizes that only god could have given the bird such a talent. The reason I believe he would relate it back to god is because all of Hopkins poems deal with nature and god's force in nature.
Hopkins was not my favorite author, however he was not bad. I was able to understand his poems for the most part, but there was nothing about them that really jumped out and grabbed my attention like the Ellis story I read!