Poem of the Day: ‘The Caged Skylark’

The English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884–1889) wrote “The Caged Skylark” in 1877, the year of his ordination to the priesthood. This milestone marked the beginning of a thankless cycle of instability and drudgework, rotating through curacies and teaching positions in England and Ireland, which lasted the rest of his life. By any normal measure, he was a failure. The star scholar who had taken a first-class degree at Oxford flunked his final examination in theology, destroying any hope of a comfortable career with the Jesuits. The depression and ill health of his last years were exacerbated by the inhospitability of his teaching work in Dublin. Twelve years after ordination, weeks shy of his forty-fifth birthday, he was dead of typhoid fever. His dying words: “I am so happy.”