The Glory of Nature
Both Hopkins's "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" and "The Windhover" provide an extended metaphor involving birds. The kingfisher and windhover are both glorified as pure forms of nature, each with traces of God found within. The universality of God and divine creation are a key theme found within the poem. Just as "kingfishers catch fire," the windhover, with its "brute beauty and valor," bursts aflame with the presence of Christ.[1] Hopkins emphasizes fire as symbolic of devout, religious passion. Each poem presents this thematic element, congruent with the necessity for appreciation of nature.
The Fire Within
Fire is also found in Through the Looking-Glass as Alice questions whether there is a real fire in the Looking-glass House. Alice comments that the reflection of smoke in the mirror may be false, "just to make it look as if they had a fire." [2] Nothing is what it seems, and the illusion may have been trickery.
Works Cited
1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Major Works Including all the Poems and Selected Prose (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 129, 132.
2. Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2000), 142.
No comments:
Post a Comment