There’s a certain kind of American teacher that needs to be honored if we are to continue the old understandings of literature as central to educating our young people in the human spirit. These are the teachers who returned, semester after semester, to show students what poetry is and how it works — who taught students how to be, and why they should be, lifetime readers. And there are the intellectual virtues that come with decades of rereading and reteaching the texts themselves: a phronesis of close analysis, a sophia of interpretation.

Beth Impson (b. 1952) is an example: professor emerita at Bryan College and author of literary pieces in such outlets as the Christendom Review, Touchstone, and World. The reason to turn to her, however is the 35 years she spent teaching literature, growing ever closer to the texts. She modestly says that of herself only that she lives in Tennessee, goes to a Presbyterian church, and enjoys reading, needlework, and her grandchildren. But really she is the kind of American figure we should be appreciating — and perpetuating in our schools.

Guest editor Beth Impson writes:

The work of the poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884–1889) became influential only after the second edition of his poems was published in the 1930s. The 1918 edition (prepared by his friend, the poet laureate Robert Bridges) did not sell well, but by the 1930s, critics had began to see the genius of his work.

Nearly all of Hopkins’s works point to God: how we might see Him if we attend to nature, or people, or even everyday domestic objects, and seek Him there. The Sun has already featured three of Hopkins’s poems in its Poem of the Day feature: “The Caged Skylark,” “No Worst There Is None,” and “Barnfloor and Winepress.” There’s something different about today’s poem, however. The year before his death, Hopkins was asked by his friend, Fr. Francis Goldie, for a poem to celebrate the 1888 canonization of the Jesuit saint Alphonsus Rodriguez of Majorca (1532–1617). Hopkins took the opportunity to write of both outward war, where “honour is flashed off exploit,” and inward war, fought against sin and temptation.

The struggles of those engaged in inward wars may be as exhausting and wounding as the struggles of those who fight outward wars, and their inward victories may be as precious to God.  Rodriguez, Hopkins explained in a letter to Robert Bridges, was a Jesuit lay brother “who for forty years acted as hall-porter to the [Jesuit] College of Palma in Majorca: he was, it is believed, much favored by God with heavenly lights and much persecuted by evil spirits.”

Rodriguez seems to have constantly suffered from temptations and was horrified at the potential for sin that he saw in himself. At the same time, he was honored for a holiness that gave him wisdom, insight, and compassion, and made him beloved by all who knew him. Hopkins would have been familiar with Rodriguez, as his work — small sermons and notes to himself on moral and spiritual topics, tied to everyday life — was read regularly in the Jesuit retreats that Hopkins attended. And the audience for this poem would have been similarly familiar with the saint.

The sonnet uses more strict iambic pentameter than many of Hopkins’ mature poems, but also makes use of his famous sprung rhythm, as in line 12: “could crowd career with conquest while there went,” where the line’s five stresses occur on the first, second, fourth, sixth and last syllables. He uses as well a few (though less than usual) of the syntactical inversions he favored, such as “there went those years by of world without event.”

Especially notable, however, is the way this poem uses sound to emphasize its content. Hard g’s and t’s appear in the opening description of literal war: gashed, galled, tongue, time, glorious. They give way to h’s and f’s and v’s in the next lines to suggest the more silent wars within: hears, hurtle, fiercest fray,  hews, veins, violets.  Then suddenly we get the alliteration of four hard c’s:  “could crowd career with conquest,” with which Hopkins builds a mirror of God’s action on the silent warrior’s behalf. The final lines come with softer y’s and w’s — while, went, years, world, watched — that mirror the quietness of the outward life Rodriguez lived.

In Honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray. 

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.