December 7, 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the wreck of the Deutschland, the event on which Gerard Manley Hopkins based the first of his ‘mature’ poems, which was written shortly after the tragedy. After becoming a Jesuit priest in 1868, Hopkins had decided not to write poetry anymore, but this event, along with some nudging by one of his superiors, catapulted him back to pen and paper. The sheer eruption that ensued would be known as The Wreck of the Deutschland, one of the greatest English poems ever written; and, although he composed the poem in 1875, it was not published until 1918—thirty years after his death.
Dr. Thomas Dilworth joins The Color of Dust to talk about The Wreck of the Deutschland, in particular, the first ten stanzas, known as the autobiographical or meditative section. In part 1, we cover stanzas 1-4 of the autobiographical section, noting the crucial themes that Hopkins seeded into the opening lines of his ode, which contains thirty-five stanzas in total. Please join us to discover the richness of his language, thought, and introspection—and perhaps take up Dr. Dilworth’s challenge to memorize the first eight lines. Below you will find both the poem and the music selected for this episode.
*(Note: Hopkins’s original indentations of each line were not followed in the version below.)
The Poem (Stanzas 1-4)
The Wreck of the Deutschland
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns, exiles by the Falk Laws, drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th, 1875
I
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones & veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.
I am soft sift
In an hourglass—at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.
The Music
The music chosen for this episode is the Kyrie portion from Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina, which you can both listen to and download below. Might the five nuns have been singing the 16th Century polyphonic Latin text of the Kyrie: “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy…" during the fateful storm at sea? I like to think so. Regardless, enjoy this version of the Kyrie by Palestrina!
Our “Fourth” Cohost
Dr. Thomas Dilworth is the author of Here Away, a collection of poems. He is also the pre-eminent reader and interpreter of the work of David Jones and is featured on The Poetry Foundation for his poem Slighting.
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