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| Felix Randal by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) Gerard Manley Hopkins was a bit of an oddity among English poets. For one thing, he wrote some quite explicitly religious poetry--he is one of the very few major English poets since Milton to have mentioned Christ by name. For another, his style was very odd, full of archaisms and dialect speech, the grammar often twisted out of shape--or just barely not out of shape--in a way we would nowadays call "experimental." During my own schooldays Hopkins was introduced to us as a nature poet (via his most famous effort in that direction, "Pied Beauty," a poem I never could get to like). That is not quite right, as his scope is much broader than that, and not only in the religious dimension. Certainly he felt a strong affinity for nature; but the natural world of Hopkins' poetry is shot through with wonder and religious feeling, with, just audible now and then, a deep strong note of despair. He seems not to have experienced much happiness, or to have found any work for which he was suited. The sonnet "Felix Randal" was probably written in the late 1870s, Hopkins then in his mid thirties. At that time he was a parish priest of the Roman Catholic church, whither he had followed John Henry Newman. He served in various parishes in England and Scotland. There is a short biography of Hopkins here; and the Hopkins Society has a website here. In "Felix Randal" Hopkins laments the death of a parishioner, a village blacksmith. He notes the man's death; recalls his fatal illness(es); expresses pity; then, in a wonderful climax, contrasts the weak, sick, dying Felix Randal with his former self, strong and proud--doing work (making iron shoes for the hoofs of carthorses) that Hopkins raises to something mythic, almost divine. [farrier = blacksmith. being anointed = having received a sacrament (presumably Extreme Unction). all road = every way (dialect). fettle = make, prepare.]
Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all
ended,
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