I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; (38)

"The Windhover" demonstrates by the mastery of the kestrel Christ's mastery in his ministry, and Hopkins on the eve of his entry into a formal ministry wishes as the heart - in-hiding to emulate Him, to buckle in himself the glorious attributes of Christ. In the final three lines, however, the poet turns to the ordinary tasks of daily living :

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

After showing the glorious mastery of the bird, the poet turns to the ordinary, the hard labor to make the ground ready for the seed, the hidden person, unknown, compared to the embers which are drab and dull but in the moment of doing flash gold vermillion. Perhaps, hidden, ordinary duties achieved.

In "The Starlight Night" the poet discovers the piece-bright paling which shuts Christ from view--the spiritual reality of heaven--a purchase, the prize of "Prayer, patience, alms, vows." Companions along road of life are specifically looked at in "A Lantern out of Doors."

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould of mind or whatever makes rare
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

When loved ones no longer walk beside us, when a person is with us, then suddenly not, what to do? Give them to Christ, "their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend." We know the roads Hopkins traveled because of the wonderful mosaic of letters, sermons, and journals: St. Beuno's, Stonyhurst, Roehampton, Derbyshire, Oxford, Bedford Leigh, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin. It is not that the poetry shows us a different man from the prose. It's just that the poems go straight to the mark, to show the way. heavenward.

When stationed in Oxford, Hopkins had care of the barracks and here we glimpse the priestly duty in "The Bugler's First Communion." We know the exact date, July 27, 1879.   A young bugler approached Hopkins with the request that he make his First Communion. The duty delights the priest: "Forth Christ from cupboard fetched," and then the priest prays the angel-warder to protect the young man:

Frowning and forefending angel-warder
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.

Of the Liverpool work, Hopkins writes to Canon Dixon, "The parish work of Liverpool is very wearying to mind and body and leaves me nothing but odds and ends of time. There is merit in it, but little Muse" (Letter XI Liverpool, May 4, 1880). Hopkins complains of inability to do anything, of jadedness. Yet there is no sign of this in the lovely poem written at the time: "Felix Randal." ' Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? My duty all ended.' This poem shows the priest's compassion and care in the anointing of the sick which brought a heavenlier heart to Felix, but the poet does not leave the reader with the image of the sick and dying man. By beautiful contrast, the poet turns to Felix's early manhood when he was maker of the "bright and battering sandal."

In "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe" written at Stonyhurst, the reader is drawn to better understand the wonders of the Incarnation and Mary's place in that mystery:

Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight,

Bridges and Canon Dixon tried to get Hopkins to agree to publication of some of his poetry . Hopkins always replied with an emphatic no. In a letter to Canon Dixon, Nov . 11, 1881, he offers an explanation, not of his not publishing, but of his sense of the value of the poetry : 'I am ashamed at the expression of high regard which your last letter and others have contained . . . The question then for me is not whether I am willing . . . to make a sacrifice of hopes of fame . . . , but whether I am not to undergo a severe judgment from God for the lothness I have shown in making it, for the reserves may have in my heart made, for the backward glances I have given with my hand upon the plough, for the waste of time the very compositions you admire may have caused and their preoccupation of the mind which belonged to more sacred or more binding duties, for the disquiet and the thoughts of vain-glory they have given rise to. (Letter XXI).

And later to Bridges he says in the same vein: "It always seems to me that poetry is unprofessional, but that is what I have said to myself, not others to me"(Letter CVII) . After a year and a half teaching at Stonyhurst, Hopkins was appointed to Dublin, to the Royal University of Ireland and to the faculty at University College to teach Latin and Greek and to read examinations. There was a row over his appointment-he was an Englishman at a time when all Ireland was wishing for Home Rule. These times were difficult . Hopkins had for years suffered from depression. Here again it was the case, exacerbated by declining health, the arduous examination grading, his family outside the Church, and the fact that his colleagues and his students sided with the rebels. Paul

Mariani in his book A Commentary on the Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins , comments: 'Although not yet forty, Hopkins felt that his poetic vein was thinning out. But when removed from Stonyhurst to Dublin and isolated from friends, family, and countrymen, he was coaxed by his muse to write again, there is a radical trans- formation in Hopkins' poetic voice which touches on the darkness of Lear in its confrontation, not with the world without, but with the self within (192) .