Wordsworth vs. Hopkins & ERH
Posted by Remy on August 20, 2009
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
-Bill Wordsworth
‘THE CHILD is father to the man.’
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.’
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.’
‘The child is father to the man!’
How can he be? The words are wild.
-G. Manley Hopkins
“No child is father to the man. Father and mother are the people who call us by our name; as their love bestows this name on us we feel that we own it securely and we feel in place.”
-Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
One Response to “Wordsworth vs. Hopkins & ERH”
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Carne Levare 
Matthew N. Petersen said
But then: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” And Sayers’ praise of Dante that even as an old man he was youthful is quite understandable.