on exceptional
occasions, that urgency of content of which we have spoken. The
communication of thought was seldom the dominant impulse of his creative
moment, and it is curious how simple his thought often proves to be when
the obscurity of his language has been penetrated. Musical elaboration
is the chief characteristic of his work, and for this reason what seem
to be the strangest of his experiments are his most essential
achievement So, for instance, 'The Golden Echo':--

'Spare!
There is one, yes, I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air,
Somewhere else where there is, ah, well, where! one,
One. Yes, I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where, whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and
fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet clearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth....'

Than this, Hopkins truly wrote, 'I never did anything more musical.' By
his own verdict and his own standards it is therefore the finest thing
that Hopkins did. Yet even here, where the general beauty is undoubted,
is not the music too obvious? Is it not always on the point of
degenerating into a jingle--as much an exhibition of the limitations of
a poetical theory as of its capabilities? The tyranny of the 'avant
toute chose' upon a mind in which the other things were not stubborn and
self-assertive is apparent. Hopkins's mind was irresolute concerning the
quality of his own poetical ideal. A coarse and clumsy assonance seldom
spread its snare in vain. Exquisite openings are involved in disaster:--

'When will you ever, Peace, wild wood dove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace....'

And the more wonderful opening of 'Windhover' likewise sinks, far less
disastrously, but still perceptibly:--

'I ca