Summary of Windhover

The windhover is a bird with the rare ability to hover in the air, essentially flying in place while it scans

the ground in search of prey. The poet describes how he saw (or “caught”) one of these birds in the

midst of its hovering. The bird strikes the poet as the darling (“minion”) of the morning, the crown

prince (“dauphin”) of the kingdom of daylight, drawn by the dappled colors of dawn. It rides the air as if

it were on horseback, moving with steady control like a rider whose hold on the rein is sure and firm. In

the poet’s imagination, the windhover sits high and proud, tightly reined in, wings quivering and tense.

Its motion is controlled and suspended in an ecstatic moment of concentrated energy. Then, in the next

moment, the bird is off again, now like an ice skater balancing forces as he makes a turn. The bird, first

matching the wind’s force in order to stay still, now “rebuff[s] the big wind” with its forward propulsion.

At the same moment, the poet feels his own heart stir, or lurch forward out of “hiding,” as it were—

moved by “the achieve of, the mastery of” the bird’s performance.

The opening of the sestet serves as both a further elaboration on the bird’s movement and an injunction

to the poet’s own heart. The “beauty,” “valour,” and “act” (like “air,” “pride,” and “plume”) “here

buckle.” “Buckle” is the verb here; it denotes either a fastening (like the buckling of a belt), a coming

together of these different parts of a creature’s being, or an acquiescent collapse (like the “buckling” of

the knees), in which all parts subordinate themselves into some larger purpose or cause. In either case,

a unification takes place. At the moment of this integration, a glorious fire issues forth, of the same

order as the glory of Christ’s life and crucifixion, though not as grand.

‘The Windhover’ was written by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) in 1877, but, like many of Hopkins’s

poems, was not published until 1918, long after his death. It’s one of his most widely anthologised

poems and some analysis of it may help readers to appreciate it as a curious and interesting example of

the sonnet form. So, what follows is a very brief analysis of the poem, designed to act as a short

introduction to its linguistic power and its themes.

A couple of things about the poem’s title and dedication: ‘windhover’ is another name for the kestrel,

and the poem is dedicated ‘To Christ Our Lord’ (Hopkins was a Catholic – indeed, a Jesuit – and many of

his poems are devotional or religious). ‘The Windhover’ is rightly praised as both a great nature poem

(about the ‘mastery’ of the bird of prey in flight, as it ‘hovers’ on, and rides, the wind) and a great

religious poem (the last six lines, along with the poem’s dedication, liken the majesty of the bird to the

masterful power of Christ). Put briefly, the first eight lines of the poem are about the poet catching, one

morning, the majestic sight of the windhover/kestrel in flight; the next three lines suggest that the

kestrel’s flight is like the awesome power and grace of Christ (‘O my chevalier!’); and the final three

lines, more sober and contemplative, reflect that we needn’t wonder that such a sublime thing exists in

nature. After all, the plodding of the horse driving the plough makes the furrows in a ploughed field

(‘plough-down sillion’ – ‘sillion’ is the poet’s own coinage) shine, and the lumps of coal in a fire (‘bluebleak

embers’) can break into new life, and glow a beautiful reddish-gold. Such ‘brute beauty’ is found

everywhere in nature, in other words. But this paraphrase of Hopkins’s actual words is only designed to

be a way into understanding what cannot adequately be paraphrased. The poem’s use of language is

crucial to its success and effectiveness as a piece of poetry, so it’s worth highlighting a few things in the

poem which are particularly interesting or noteworthy.

First, the poem is a sonnet – a poem usually of fourteen lines – and more specifically a Petrarchan

sonnet that rhymes abba abba cdc dcd (Petrarchan sonnets almost always rhyme abba abba in the first

eight lines, or the ‘octave’; the final six lines, or ‘sestet’, rhyme in various ways). We have more about

the curious variability and versatility of the sonnet form here. However, this isn’t immediately obvious,

because, unlike other sonnets which usually contain ten syllables per line (e.g. ‘Shall I compare thee to a

summer’s day?‘ or ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways‘), Hopkins’s poem is far more varied in its

number of syllables per line. The first line actually does contain ten syllables, but the word ‘kingdom’ is

cut in two, with the poem’s second line beginning mid-word. That second line contains sixteen syllables.

This is because of Hopkins’s peculiar approach to poetic rhythm and metre, known as ‘sprung rhythm’.

What is the point of sprung rhythm? Well, for one, it allows Hopkins to get closer to the rhythms of

natural speech: indeed, one of Hopkins’s earliest champions, the critic F. R. Leavis, argued that Hopkins

was the only English poet who rivalled Shakespeare for his poetic imitation of natural speech.

Second, to capture the awe the poet experiences when viewing the bird, his language is appropriately

awe-inspired: so, for instance, he writes ‘the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’ where the stuttering

force of that comma, the exclamation mark, and the unusual use of ‘achieve’ as a noun (not ‘the

achievement’, but ‘the achieve’), all convey his almost breathless excitement at witnessing the bird in

flight. The sense of religious awe is a world away from Thomas Hardy’s bleak view of a godless world in

‘The Darkling Thrush’.

If there is one word we might use to describe Hopkins’s characteristic poetic style, it is ‘headlong’. The

vibrancy of the sprung rhythm, and the unusual word-choices (‘achieve’, ‘sillion’), both seek to convey

the awe the poet felt when he saw the windhover. In turn, we can marvel in awe at the sheer ‘mastery’

of language which Hopkins’s poem demonstrates. This short analysis can only go so far towards

addressing this, but we hope we’ve provided an interesting introduction to Hopkins’s distinct style as it

is displayed in this, one of his greatest poems.