Poem: The Sea and the Skylark by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was inspired by “the charm and instress of Wales” and also by the Welsh poetic device known as cynghanedd. In 1877, the year of his ordination, he wrote a number of ground-breaking, almost ode-like sonnets, among them this week’s poem The Sea and the Skylark.

Spatial and sensory location are important at the start of the octet. The speaker is standing on or beside the beach at Rhyl, the seaside town in north Wales where the sonnet’s first draft was written. With a sense of double-occasion, he hears the sea on his right and the lark-song rising from the meadowland on his left. The registering of these complex sounds requires two ears – and, from the diction, all the range of polyphonic effects it can dispense.

The Sea and the Skylark

On ear and ear two noises too old to end 

Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore; 

With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar, 

Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,

His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score 

In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour 

And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town! 

How ring right out our sordid turbid time,

Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime: 

Our make and making break, are breaking, down 

To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.