“Duns Scotus’s Oxford” by George Manley Hopkins (1918)

Though it was published in his 1918 posthumous collection, Hopkins initially wrote “Duns Scotus’s Oxford” in 1879. Duns Scotus was a medieval philosopher who proved immensely influential for Hopkins. The poem opens by giving a contemporary description of Oxford and the surrounding natural landscape, and the speaker muses on his own connection to Duns Scotus by simply being present in Oxford and breathing the same air that the philosopher may have breathed himself.

“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1945)

The influence of Hopkins’s Christian faith, specifically Roman Catholicism, is evident in this particular poem Hopkins wrote in 1877. Like his other poems, this text was collected and published in 1918 after Hopkins’s death. In the poem, the speaker muses on the destruction and disrepair the earth and nature have suffered at the hands of mankind. Despite this, however, nature is perpetual and regenerative, a reflection of God’s eternal nature.

“The Wreck of the Deutschland” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

Hopkins was inspired to write “The Wreck of the Deutschland” in 1875 after hearing of the Deutschland’s wreck while entering the Thames. Many lives were lost in the shipwreck; five nuns who perished were on their way to England after being cast out of their convent in Prussia.