The Windhover

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Religious Epiphany

In the 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly experienced a religious epiphany during battle. He witnessed a vision of a cross in the sky, and soon after he ushered in the beginning of Europe’s full conversion to Christianity from Paganism. For centuries, the Christian epiphany has existed as a powerful rhetorical tool designed to illustrate the indescribable power Christians believe God has over the mind, heart, and soul. Essentially, a religious epiphany is an act of God, and it brings about great intellectual change and growth.

While Hopkins’s poem doesn’t describe a conversion epiphany, it presents the story of an epiphany that deepens one's commitment to their Christian belief. The epiphany in the poem is the connection the speaker makes between what he sees in the bird and how the vision of the bird relates to thoughts of the soul and its place in the world. Hopkins uses the image of fire—a common image in Christianity—to express the feeling of enlightenment that comes with this introspection. He realizes that the bird’s qualities—control, beauty, grace, perfection in form, renewal—exist in other things, including the soul.

It is ironic that Hopkins felt for a long time that poetry and religious devotion were at odds. It’s ironic because this poem uses all the techniques poetry allows to amplify a message about God. Hopkins tries to inspire a religious epiphany in readers, and he is able to get close to that mission because he effectively manipulates sound to recreate the feeling of experiencing an epiphany. Ultimately, the poem does everything it can to mirror with form the feeling it is trying to capture, and this technique adds to the poem’s rhetorical effectiveness.

Awe

Hopkins takes a common subject—a bird—and treats it with the reverence a subject might treat a king or a mother might treat her baby. The opening two lines establish the nobility of the bird: “I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- / dom of daylight’s dauphin” (Lines 1-2). The bird is given dominion over the environment and is named with honorable, historical terms.

Immediately after this regal description, Hopkins makes the bird a mythological hero and a Christlike figure of conquest and power. The image of the bird as rider on horse in full control of the reins riding high and tall above the clouds immediately invokes the image of a thousand historical generals like Alexander or Napoleon. However, this bird does not seek to conquer with violence the way those men did; instead, this bird floats with the grace of a skater smoothly sweeping across the ice. The movement of this bird is smooth yet tight, open yet rigid. This is a kind of commanding grace akin to the image of a resurrected Jesus cloaked in spiritual perfection.

Near the end of the first stanza, the speaker expresses his full admiration and awe at this figure: “My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird” (Lines 7-8). The combination of the bird’s mastery over its elements and the bird’s grace in its power stirs an appreciative sense of wonder and awe in the speaker.

And yet, the brilliance and awe of the bird pales in comparison to the fire and awe brought about by the experience of Christ. The second half of the poem gives words to the feelings of being completely awestruck by a complete embrace of Christ and an understanding of how the soul relates to the natural world. The level of emotion here is intense, yet the command of rhythm, rhyme, and form gives the poem a sense of control similar to that of the bird.

The Relationship Between the Natural and Spiritual Worlds

One thing the poem tries to do is create a juxtaposition between what is natural and what is spiritual. Hopkins seeks the experience of the divine through non-divine things, and the poem implies that even within the most common, everyday things, a spiritual person has the ability to experience God. As Ange Mlinko points out, Hopkins is echoing something he expresses in another poem, “God’s Grandeur” (1877): “The world is charged with the grandeur of God / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil” (Mlinko, Ange. “Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘The Windhover.’” Poetry Foundation, 2009.). God’s design and perfect natural system are at full display in the bird, and it only takes a keen observer to see God in that system. By bringing one’s vision closer to God’s design, the poem argues that one can better embrace and appreciate the spiritual world.

The poem ends with bright colors gushing forward in an other-worldly way. The strange image in the final line of the poem is abstract but alludes to Christ after the crucifixion with the word “gash.” The blood that comes forth isn’t just red, it is “gold-vermilion.” The elevated diction and the inclusion of the word gold adds to the regal imagery that came earlier in the poem, and the transition here from simple bird to spiritual avatar is complete.