EXPLORING The Windhover


This breathtaking poem may well be the best-known of all Hopkins’ poems (it even made on appearance in season 25 of The Simpsons when Bart befriends a falconer). Perhaps even more so than any other poem by Hopkins, this poem is written with such a combination of poetic techniques, archaic words and neologisms (new or made-up words),  Windhover’ is written in sprung rhythm and in the sonnet form, with a descriptive octet and 


‘Windhover’ is another name for the common kestrel. This small falcon is a bird of prey whose strength and grace are truly extraordinary to witness. A windhover can hover in the sky when it spots its prey, while at other times it rides the draughts of the wind seemingly effortlessly (although its wings beat three or four times a second). The dedication ‘To Christ our Lord’ tells us that this bird may be a symbol for God or that the bird, having been created by God, is proof of his greatness. While virtually all of Hopkins’ poems were written according to the Jesuit motto ‘for the greater glory of God’, this poem is particularly revealing of his utter devotion and his tremendous awe for nature.


 way: ‘I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-/ dom of daylight’s dauphin’. To Hopkins, the falcon is the darling of the morning, and the morning is his kingdom, his natural element, for he is daylight’s prince. The repetition of ‘morning’ conveys that this is the falcon’s natural domain. The verb ‘caught’ suggests capture, but in the same sense as we might say we ‘captured’ a photograph of something. Falcons hunt so early in the morning and so deep in the countryside that it can be rare to spot them. ‘Caught’ may also indicate that Hopkins has been actively seeking the falcon, hoping to see him or ‘catch’ him. He uses more alliteration when describing the falcon dappled by the light of dawn, but he may also have ‘dappled’ or mottled plumage: ‘dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon’.


 stunning, as Hopkins compares his circling in the sky to the graceful movements of a horse led on a rein: ‘in his riding/ Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding/ High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing/ In his ecstasy!’


214 VERSE 2025


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