The Windhover Analysis for LC English

The Windhover analysis reveals Gerard Manley Hopkins’s deep exploration of devotional praise, natural beauty, and the hidden divinity in creation, all crucial for your Leaving Cert English exam.

This sonnet, dedicated ‘To Christ our Lord’, showcases Hopkins’s unique poetic style, known as ‘sprung rhythm’ and ‘inscape’. Understanding these elements is key to a high-scoring analysis. For an essay on its descriptive power, consider our guide on descriptive essay writing to refine your expression.

Poetic Techniques in The Windhover Analysis

Hopkins meticulously crafts language to convey intense spiritual and aesthetic experience. When approaching the Windhover analysis, consider these prominent techniques:

• Sprung Rhythm: This allows varying numbers of unstressed syllables to cluster around stressed ones, mimicking natural speech and the bird’s erratic flight. It creates an energetic, almost breathless quality.
• Alliteration and Assonance: Phrases like ‘dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon’ or ‘riding and striding’ enhance musicality and draw attention to key images, creating a sense of dynamic movement.
• Inscape and Instress: ‘Inscape’ refers to the unique, inherent design or essence of a thing, while ‘instress’ is the moment that inscape is perceived. The windhover’s flight is a perfect example of felt inscape.
• Compound Adjectives: Words such as ‘kingfishers’-dart’, ‘fire-fiery’, and ‘brute-beauty’ condense meaning and bring vivid imagery to life.

Themes and Imagery in The Windhover

Hopkins infuses ‘The Windhover’ with rich thematic depth and powerful imagery. A thorough the Windhover analysis demands attention to these core ideas:

• Sacredness of Nature: The windhover is not just a bird; it is a manifestation of divine perfection, a fleeting glimpse of God’s handiwork. Its flight is an act of worship.
• Physicality and Spirituality: The poem celebrates the bird’s physical prowess (‘buckle!’) but elevates it to a spiritual plane, revealing how the mundane can be infused with the divine.
• Christ’s Sacrifice: The closing lines shift from the bird to a deeper Christian metaphor, referencing the pain and glory of Christ’s suffering. The mundane acts of ‘plough’ and ’embers’ symbolise the hidden grace in everyday toil and sacrifice.
• Beauty and Power: The bird embodies ‘brute beauty’ and ‘valour and act’, suggesting an awe-inspiring power that hints at something greater than itself.

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins is a complex poem. For an even deeper understanding, you should link its themes to Hopkins’s broader spiritual concerns. Consider how it fits within the context of his other devotional poems and his Jesuit calling.

💡 Examiner insight: Students often get bogged down explaining ‘sprung rhythm’ without linking it to the poem’s effect. Instead of just defining it, discuss how it contributes to the depiction of the bird’s flight or the poem’s overall energy.

Key Takeaways for Exam Success

• Focus on the interplay between natural detail and spiritual meaning.
• Discuss specific poetic techniques (sprung rhythm, alliteration, compound words) and their impact.
• Connect the bird’s physical attributes to a deeper symbolic or religious interpretation.
• Understand the poem’s structure as a sonnet and how Hopkins deviates from traditional forms.