Mortal Beauty, God's Grace: Major Poems and Spiritual Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins

About the Author

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is one of English poetry's most brilliant innovators, and one of the most distinguished poets of any age. However, during his lifetime he was known not as a poet, but as a Jesuit priest, and his faith was essential to his work. This collection contains not only all of Hopkin's significant poetry, but also selections from his journals, sermons, and letters, all chosen for their spiritual guidance and insight. His writings combine an intense feeling for nature with an ecstatic awareness of its divine origins, most remarkably expressed in his magnificent and highly original "sprung rhythm." Because Hopkins was generally unsuccessful at publishing his poems, his genius did not begin to be appreciated until the first collection of his work appeared in 1918. Now, more than a hundred years after his death, his words are still a source of inspiration and sheer infectious joy in the radiance of God's creation.