Hopkins and Cynewulf: "The Wreck of the Deutschland," "The Windhover," "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe," and the Christ.

Cotter, James Finn

Cynewulf's Christ is a title given in the mid-nineteenth century to a series of three poems that appear together and open The Exeter Book, a manuscript that has belonged to the Chapter Library of Exeter Cathedral at least since 1072. The three poems, "Advent," "The Ascension," and "The Last Judgment," written in the second half of the eighth century, have been attributed to Cynewulf whose runic signature is inscribed into the final lines of "The Ascension." (1) Nothing is known of the poet, but his ecclesiastical knowledge, scriptural learning, and poetic ability indicate a clerical or monastic author whose work led to a school of imitators of his religious poetry (Calder, pp. 24-25).

Although the order of Nativity, Ascension, and Second Coming follow the traditional New Testament story of Christ and would seem to support the unity of the work, stylistic, structural, and formal differences between the three poems have led modern scholars to doubt the attribution of the first and third poems to Cynewulf. (2) The "Advent" verses are a series of lyrics based on the liturgical prayers of the Great Antiphons; "The Ascension" is a poetic version of a Latin Gospel homily by Gregory the Great; and "The Last Judgment" is an apocalyptic poem with a mixture of narrative, descriptive, and lyrical passages. For the purposes of this paper, however, the Victorian idea of the unity of the three poems as the Christ and Cynewulf's authorship will be assumed in discussing the work as an analogue of three of Hopkins' poems.

Hopkins studied Welsh poetry and in his own poems employed the system of cynghanedd with its intricate use of alliteration and internal rhyme. (3) He also read William Langland's Piers Plowman, at least in part, but there is no evidence he read Old English in the original before 1882. In November of that year Hopkins wrote to Robert Bridges, "In fact I am learning Anglo-saxon and it is a vastly superior thing to what we have now." (4) However, he might well have read Cynewulf in translation. Benjamin Thorpe's modern version of the poems of the Christ in his translation of the Codex Exoniensis (1842) was available to him at Oxford, and with his interest in Anglo-Saxon word origins and his personal usage of root words, Hopkins was most likely familiar with Old English Christian poetry. His love of the early Middle Ages and Britain would have led him to Cynewulf and the poetry ascribed to him at the time. Similarities in content, theme, purpose, and imagery between the Christ and "The Wreck of the Deutschland," "The Windhover," and "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe" make a comparison of the poetry worth exploring.

I

"The Wreck of the Deutschland" is an Advent poem dominated by the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, the coming birth of Jesus, and the virgin nun's "birth of the Word" in her confession of Christ in the midst of the shipwreck. Like "The Wreck," the Old English "Advent" poem hails the "King of all kings," "Christ Almighty," who "wast of old / become for all/ ... a begotten child." (5) The earlier hymn is a petition to Christ's mastery and "mercy to mankind":

 Come now, Lord of triumph,
 Creator of mankind
 Do thou this mid-earth
 kindly bless
 through thine advent,
 Saviour Christ! (Codex, pp. 15-16)

In a similarly invocatory style, the Victorian poet's ode celebrates "The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides." (6)

Both Hopkins and Cynewulf proclaim their Lord's victory over man's evil nature through his Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection as a cosmic event that resonates down to the present. The Old English poet describes the Lord's coming in his dedicatory "Advent" poem "To Jesus Christ":

 [T]hat was a secret
 mystery of the Lord,
 all a ghostly grace,
 earth's region it pervaded;
 there many things
 became enlighten'd
 with longsome lore,
 through life's Author,
 which ere in darkness
 had hidden lain,
 the oracles of prophets,
 when the Powerful came,
 he who of every speech
 the course enlargeth,
 of those who adequately
 the Creator's name,
 through prudent nature
 will praise. (pp. 3-4)

"What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay, / Is out with it" (st. 7-8, 11. 55-56). What once was secret is now disclosed to prudent hearts. "Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go" (st. 8, 1. 64), Hopkins writes of the historical and universal impact of Christ's revealing and redemptive death on the cross. Both poets are moved to utter praise, since the Word himself breaks the silence of past ages and speaks as God for God.

The opening stanza of "The Wreck" invokes "God!," as does "O Christ, O God" in the second stanza, as Christ the Master-Maker, Savior-Creator, "Lord of living and dead": "Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh" (st. 1, 1. 5). The Incarnate Lord has fashioned human beings and restored them in his own image. The first "Advent" lyric, "To Jesus Christ," likewise calls on the "Chief of glory" who "the body created, / limbs of clay" so that:

 Now shall the Lord of life
 the abject band
 from foes deliver,
 the miserable from terror,
 as he oft did. (p. 2)

Christ comes to the rescue. Just as Hopkins prays the Trinity in the name of humankind:

 Be adored among men,
 God, three-numbered form;
 Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
 Man's malice, with wrecking and storm. (st. 9, 11. 65-68)

so the eighth-century poet writes:

 We at least for need,
 these words speak,
 him who created man,
 that we in prison
 sit sorrowing,
 the sun's course,
 when us the Lord of life
 may light disclose,
 be to our mind
 as a protector,
 and the weak understanding
 surround with honour. (pp. 2-3)

Both poems describe "how the miserable shall / await mercy" (p. 5), and plead: "Make mercy in all of us, out of us all / Mastery" (st. 10, 11. 79-80), as human beings, victims of their own weaknesses, subject to overwhelming odds, cry out for deliverance from the storms of life.

The Christ of "The Wreck" is the ascended Lord who now reigns in glory. Master of space and time, he is the eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, one and the same, "Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head" (st. 28, 1. 221). Through the Great Sacrifice of the cross, he has overcome death and time to resurrect the temporal into eternity, in his spiritual risen body which he now shares in the Eucharist with his historical followers. However, he remains in heaven even while interceding, with Mary his mother, here on earth: "Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!" (st. 34, 1. 269). While the doomed and battered Deutschland founders on the snow-swept, surf-pounding strand at Kent, the Lord watches from the stars: "but thou art above, thou Orion of light" (st. 21, 1. 165). As the God-man, he acts as Creator-Redeemer, his "lovely-felicitous Providence" calling "the poor sheep back" (st. 31, 11. 245, 248). He is the ascended "Jesu, heart's light / Jesu, maid's son" (st. 30, 11. 233-234) who lives in glory and acts in time, a God immanent in nature and yet transcending nature:

 Ground of being and granite of it: past all
 Grasp God, throned behind
 Death, with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides.
 (st. 32, 11. 254-256)

"The Ascension" also celebrates the event of the "Glory of kings" entering heaven:

 the true Lord
 into heaven going:
 the Lord of triumph
 will up from hence
 his habitation enter,
 (the Chief of Princes,
 with this train of angels,
 Creator of all people,)
 His Father's kingdom. (p. 32)

The moment of the Ascension is dramatically described:

 Then was glory's Guardian
 taken in clouds,
 th' archangels' King,
 up on high,
 the Patron of the holy;
 joy was renewed,
 bliss in the cities,
 through the Chiefs coming.
 Sat victorious,
 on the right hand,
 th' eternal Source of bliss,
 of his own Father. (p.33)

Christ ascended on high, not for his own benefit but to pour forth even more blessings as the Maker and re-newer of creation and creature. According to "The Ascension," the risen Lord is the same incarnate God whose goodness pours down to humankind gifts of various talents: speech, insight, song, music, astronomy, "success in battle," as well as material goods such as food, mild weather, the "holy gems" of sun, moon, and stars, and the dew and rain which bring abundance to the earth with its green trees, fruits, and flowers:

 Thus mighty God,
 by his unsparing gifts,
 King of all creatures,
 greatly honoureth
 earth's progeny. (p. 43)

The Ascension of the Eternal Son has brought grace and glory for "the prosperity of God's servants" (p. 44). So for Hopkins, the risen Lord is a "released shower" (st. 34, 1. 272) and "a dayspring to the dimness of us," "a crimson-cresseted east / More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls" (st. 35, 11. 277-278).

The most unusual image of "The Ascension" is taken from Gregory's homily and based in turn on a verse from Solomon's Song of Songs: "Behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills" (2.8). (7) Cynewulf describes six leaps in Christ's redemptive mission: the Incarnation at the Annunciation, the Nativity, Crucifixion, Deposition and Burial, Harrowing of Hell, and Resurrection and Ascension (pp. 44-47). (8) As Calder observes, "Each [leap] is part of the whole: the Ascension holds the highest rank and also symbolizes that whole" (p. 67). Stanzas 7-8 of "The Wreck" depict the same sequence of the Christ-event, beginning as does Cynewulf's poem in the context of the Ascension and immediately describing the conception and birth of Jesus:

 It dates from day
 Of his going in Galilee;
 Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;
 Manger, maiden's knee. (st. 7, 11. 49-52)

The reference to "his going in Galilee" alludes to Christ's Ascension, as Norman MacKenzie points out in his note to the line in his edition of The Poetical Works (p. 327). (9) After the Resurrection, Jesus' women followers are instructed by an angel: "And going quickly, tell ye his disciples that he is risen: and behold he will go before you into Galilee" (Matthew 28.7); "And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them" (Matthew 28.16). In addition, the phrase "his going in Galilee" may allude to the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary in "Nazareth, a town of Galilee" (Luke 1.26), thus fusing the first and last moments of Christ's life on earth. Hopkins also links the birth of Christ with his death, the womb-tomb symbolism of Christian tradition where the swaddling clothes become a burial shroud and the manger the wood of the cross. In infancy and in death the body of Jesus rested on the "maiden's knee" of Mary.

"The dense and the driven Passion" (st. 7, 1. 52) comprises the third leap; his burial the fourth: "thy dark descending" (st. 9, 1. 72); "with a love glides / Lower than death and the dark" (st. 33, 11. 259-260) the fifth; and the ascent into heaven the sixth. Cynewulf describes the first three leaps when Christ at the Annunciation leaps in his descent to "the maid immaculate" and his birth at Bethlehem "in a child's form, / with clothes enwrapt," to the third leap, "the Heaven-king's course, / when on the cross he mounted."

 The fourth spring was
 into the tomb,
 when he the tree resign'd,
 in the earth house fast.
 The fifth leap was,
 when of hell's inmates he
 humbled the multitude. (pp. 45-46)

"The sixth leap was, / ... when he to heaven ascended, / into his ancient home" (p. 46). The poet concludes:

 Thus here on earth,
 God's eternal child
 over high steeps
 sprang by leaps,
 bold, from mount to mount;
 so we men should,
 in our heart's thoughts,
 spring by leaps
 from virtue to virtue,
 strive after glory,
 that we may to the highest
 summit rise,
 through holy works,
 where is joy and bliss,
 an illustrious band of ministers. (pp. 46-47)

In the opening stanzas of his ode, Hopkins tells of his own "horror of height" as he bent himself in submission to God's will, until he found wings for flight "with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host" in the altar tabernacle (st. 3, 1. 21) so that he is now able "To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace" (st. 3, 1. 24). Both poets overcome their "terror" of the "vengeance of sin" (p. 50) when facing "Thy terror, O Christ, O God" (st. 2, 1. 12) so that they ascend "from virtue to virtue" to "the highest / summit." Cynewulf urges his listeners "ere that grisly terror, / in this barren time" to "earnestly bear in mind/ ... the spirit's beauty" (p. 53). He sums up the Ascension as the union of our bodies with the risen body of Christ:

 Great is the need to us,
 that we with heart
 salvation seek,
 that we with spirit
 fervently believe,
 that that Child of salvation
 may hence ascend
 with our bodies,
 the living God. (p. 47)

"The Last Judgment," the third part of the Christ, describes in graphic detail not only the realm of bliss and light awaiting the saved when each shall come with "his heart's thoughts / before the heavens' King" (p. 64), but also the torments and pain in store for the damned. In the course of the poem, however, passages depicting the panorama of Doomsday are crowned by an image of "the high rood, / rais'd erect, / in sign of sway, / before th' assemblage of men" (p. 66). Towering over the cosmos, the cross is a beacon illuminating all creation. The sun and moon fail while the red blood of the Savior shines through the heavens, "when the red / rood over all / the heaven shineth" (p. 68). An extended account "On the Crucifixion" with its earthquake and darkness over the earth reveals that "guilty men" and Hell itself understood "that the Creator was come, / the powerful God" (p. 71). The Jesuit poet's belief in the Great Sacrifice resembles this cosmic depiction of God's Passion, for "it was only through Christ and the great sacrifice that God had meant any being to come to him at all." (10)

"The Last Judgment" also contains sea imagery that relates it to Hopkins' poem. At his Second Coming, the dements, from the fires of hell to the waters of this world, recognize their Creator and Lord:

 Yea, eke the sea declar'd
 who had set it
 on the broad ground,
 the glorious mighty King,
 therefore it itself passable
 towards him made;
 when God would
 over its wave go,
 the water-stream durst not
 his Lord's feet
 sink in the flood. (pp. 71-72)

In Stanza 25, Hopkins recalls Jesus' walking on the water "in the weather of Gennesareth" (Luke 8.22-25), and "in wind's burly and beat of endragoned seas" (st. 27, 1. 215), "The Christ of the Father compassionate" (st. 33, 1. 264) comes to rescue the nuns and endangered souls of the shipwreck. Christ is "master of the tides, / Of the Yore-flood" (st. 32, 11. 249-250) in both "The Wreck" and Christ.

Employing an epic simile, "The Ascension" closes with a passage comparing life's journey to a windy and hazardous sea-voyage having heaven as its harbor:

 Now is it to that likest
 as if we on the liquid flood,
 over the cold water,
 in vessels journey,
 through a wide sea,
 on ocean-horses
 the flood-wood traverse.
 That is a perilous stream
 of boundless waves,
 on which here we are toss'd
 through this weak world,
 windy seas,
 over a deep path. (p. 53)

As in "The Wreck," Christ the Master comes to the aid of his followers amid the wind, gales, flood of waves, and brawling storm:

 Hard was our condition,
 ere that we to land
 had sail'd,
 over a troubled main,
 when to us help came,
 that us to safety
 led in port,
 God's Spirit-son,
 and us grace gave. (p. 53)

"The Ascension" concludes with a prayer for its readers and listeners:

 Let us in that port
 found our hope
 which to us hath assign'd
 the Sovereign of the skies
 holy on high,
 when he to heaven ascended. (p. 54)

Hopkins ends his ode with a similar hope that the victims of the shipwreck and his audience of "English souls" will welcome back their king and high-priest to share finally in "the heaven-haven of the reward" (st. 35, 1. 275).

II

An unusual symbol for Christ's rising into the sky before his disciples occurs in lines 631-656 of "The Ascension": Cynewulf compares Christ to a bird (fugel):

 Job, as he well could,
 prais'd men's Protector,
 the Saviour lauded,
 and with congenial love,
 for the Powerful's Son
 a noble name devis'd,
 and a bird him named. (p. 40)

The poet refers to a verse in Job 28.7: "The bird hath not known the path." The Revised Standard edition translates the full verse as follows: "That path no bird of prey knows, and the falcon's eyes has not seen it." Cynewulf is following the commentary of Gregory in his Homilies on the Gospels, no. 29: "Avis enim recte appelatus est Dominus, quia corpus carneum ad aethera libravit" ("The Lord has rightly been called a bird, since He launched His fleshly body into the ether"). (11) Cynewulf continues:

 That bird's flight was
 to his foes on earth
 hidden and secret,
 to those who a dark understanding
 had in their breasts,
 a stony heart:
 these would not the splendid
 signs acknowledge,
 that before them wrought
 the noble Child of God,
 many, various,
 throughout mid-earth. (p. 40)

In "The Windhover," Hopkins also contrasts the "splendid signs" of the bird's dawn-lit flight, the "hurl and gliding" of its valorous struggle against the "big wind," with the timid "heart in hiding" that watches from earth below (11. 6,7). The sestet then urges the heart to respond with the "sheer plod" of inspired heroic effort to imitate Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection by its own lifting up through grace. "The Ascension" declares:

 Thus the faithful bird
 his flight assay'd,
 now the abode of angels
 sought on high,
 proud, strong in might,
 that noble home;
 now he to earth
 again descended,
 through the spirit's grace
 this lower region sought,
 to the world turn'd. (pp. 40-41)

"Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle!"(11. 9-10). Hopkins' image clearly involves the bird as an incarnational figure when the bird turns in its flight from "there" to "here" and rapidly descends to earth.

Both poets emphasize the need to recognize the real presence behind the symbol:

 They might not that bird's
 flight know,
 who of the ascension
 made denial,
 and believ'd not,
 that life's Author,
 in form of man,
 above the hosts celestial,
 holy from earth
 was rais'd. (p. 41)

Christ the Lord is present in nature as its Creator and present in the heart as Redeemer. The Incarnation through the Great Sacrifice of self-surrender, God's becoming man, is the reality that gives the symbol meaning and life. The God-man who was lifted up on the cross rose up into the sky as the first-born from the dead. Calder observes: "Once more Cynewulf creates a double perspective as he makes the bird's flight both up to heaven and down to earth, representing both Ascension and Incarnation" (p. 60). (12) As in "The Windhover," the bird soars and dives, rides the air and buckles its wings to swoop to earth, as Cynewulf pictures the bird-Christ: "proud, strong in might, / that noble home; / now he on earth / again descended" (p. 40). As the falcon stoops in his downward dive to seek "this lower region," so the Word became flesh to dwell and die among men:

 No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
 Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
 Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. (11. 12-14) (13)

"[M]any, various, / throughout the mid-earth" the splendid signs of the flashing wings of the windhover in the morning sky may be seen reflected in the ploughed-up earth at one's feet and the fire-bursting embers of a burning-out hearth. The red-stained Rood remains an ever-renewing poetic symbol of the glory of God. Hopkins dedicated the sonnet "to Christ our Lord" because he "caught" in the "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" an inscape of the God-man's abiding presence and activity in the world and, in turn, in his own loving and awe-struck heart.

III

Hopkins began to study Anglo-Saxon in the fall of 1882 at Stonyhurst and the following May he wrote "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe." (14) In rhythm, form, content, and imagery it resembles the "Advent" lyric "To the Virgin Mary." The Cynewulf poem opens with an invocation:

 O Delight of women
 throughout the host of glory,
 damsel most noble
 over all earth's region. (p. 5)

The poet bids Mary to "relate to us the mystery, / that from the skies came to thee," how she bore a child while remaining a virgin:

 Now thou the Glory of majesty
 in thy bosom barest,
 and was not injur'd
 thy pure virginity. (p. 6)

So Hopkins describes Mary's part in salvation:

 Mary Immaculate,
 Merely a woman, yet
 Whose presence, power is
 Great as no goddess's
 Was deemed, dreamed; who
 This one work has to do--
 Let all God's glory through,
 God's glory which would go
 Through her and from her flow
 Off, and no way but so. (11. 24-33)

A fundamental image in Hopkins' poem is the sunlight of God which is filtered and tempered through the Virgin-Mother as the earth's atmosphere. The air-image for Mary is unique with the Jesuit poet, but the traditional light symbolism is beautifully developed in the "Advent" lyric and is central to the Incarnational theme of Hopkins' poem:

 O ray,
 of angels brightest,
 over mid-earth
 sent to men,
 and just
 beam of the sun,
 bright over the heavenly bodies;
 thou each season,
 from thee thyself,
 ever enlightenst. (p. 7)

Christ as "God of God, / ready begotten," and "in the glory of the firmament," now carries out his work of salvation:

 that thou to us the bright
 sun sendest,
 and thyself comest,
 that thou mayest enlighten
 those, who long ago,
 with vapour cover'd,
 and in darkness here
 sat, in continual night. (p. 8)

So Hopkins contrasts the world before and after Christ's coming:

 So God was god of old:
 A mother came to mould
 Those limbs like ours which are
 What must make our daystar
 Much dearer to mankind;
 Whose glory bare would blind
 Or less would win man's mind. (11. 103-109)

Both poems close with a prayer and the imagery of heaven. Hopkins asks Mary to "Fold home, fast fold thy child" (l. 126) and Cynewulf begs the "Prince of glory" to "grant us eternal joy / of thy glory." He prays:

 that thee may worship,
 Glory-King of hosts!
 those whom thou wroughtest erst
 with thy hands.
 Thou in the heavens
 for ever dwellest,
 with the omnipotent Father. (p. 10)

For Cynewulf and Hopkins, Christ is always now the ascended Lord who reigns in glory, and Mary in her own body already shares and lives in that risen world with him.

IV

Cynewulf's Christ stands as a monument at the beginning of English poetry. Ever aware of his Christian, British, and cultural origins, Hopkins wrote in a tradition of religious and poetic values that he emulated and attempted to re-create centuries later for his own and later generations. For both poets the historical events of Christ's life, death, and resurrection shape the center of universal and individual existence and challenge the poet's expression of his own personal witness to his ascended Lord in glory as an "Orion of light" (st. 21, 1.165), as "morning's minion, king-/dom of daylight's dauphin," or as "our daystar / Much dearer to mankind." The Old English author's words describing the poet's gift,

 He can all things abundantly
 sing and say,
 to whom the power of wisdom is
 in soul committed. (p. 42)

are true of both poets who felt compelled, as the Jesuit priest wrote, "truer than tongue," to confess "the gospel-proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ's gift" (st. 4, 11. 32). In their poems they each set out to probe and ponder "through his mouth's guest" (p. 41) the mystery of the Gospel by re-imagining and re-telling the good news "past telling of tongue" (st. 9, 1. 69). Hopkins and Cynewulf "did say yes" to the call of their confession of faith, hope, and love through the "word-rune" of their poetry. (15)

Notes

(1) Daniel G. Calder, Cynewulf (Boston: Twayne, 1981), p. 43. See also pp. 72-73. Nowadays not all agree on Cynewulf's dates; see Patrick W. Conner, "On Dating Cynewulf," in Cynewulf: Basic Readings, ed. Robert Bjork (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 23-55.

(2) Robert E. Diamond, "The Diction of the Old English Christ," in Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation For John C. MacGalliard, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1975), p. 301. See also Claes Schaar, Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group (1949; repr. New York: Haskell House, 1967), pp. 104-108.

(3) Norman H. MacKenzie, A Reader's Guide to Gerard Manley Hopkins (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 229-230. See also W. H. Gardner, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889): A Study of Poetic Idiosyncrasy in Relation to Poetic Tradition (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), 2, pp. 143-158. A helpful summary of Hopkins' possible knowledge of Old English versification is found in William A. Quinn, "Hopkins' Anglo-Saxon," HQ 8, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 25-32. See also R. J. Schoeck, "Influence and Originality in the Poetry of Hopkins," Renascence 9, no. 2 (Winter 1956): 77-84. On the wider subject of Anglo-Saxon influence, see Richard C. Payne, "The Rediscovery of Old English Poetry in the English Literary Tradition," in Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries, ed. Carl T. Berkhout and Milton McC. Gatch (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982), pp. 149-166; and Clare A. Simmons, "Iron-Worded Proof: Victorian Identity and the Old English Language," Studies in Medievalism 4 (1992): 202-214.

(4) The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, ed. C. C. Abbott (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1935), p. 163. In October 1882 Hopkins informed Bridges that sprung rhythm "existed in full force in Anglo saxon verse and in great beauty" (p. 156). In 1858, five years before Hopkins entered Balliol, Cambridge's Joseph Hall became Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Although there is no evidence that Hopkins studied Old English before 1882, he certainly could have read translations.

(5) Codex Exoniensis: A Collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, ed. and trans. Benjamin Thorpe (London, 1842), p. 14. Future citations are to this translation. Although Thorpe does not identify Christ as a unit within the text, he translates all the sections of the poem under his own various titles, the main ones being "On the Nativity," "On the Ascension," and "On the Day of Judgment." Together with the original Old English text he transcribes and translates the 1693 verses in single half-lines. In the original Exeter manuscript, the cycle itself stands at the beginning in three separate untitled divisions. The German scholar Franz Dietrich in 1853 first gave the title Christ to the three-part poem. Thorpe does acknowledge John Kemble's discovery of the name of Cynewulf within the runes (pp. 501-502 n.50.8).

(6) The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 127 ("Wreck," st. 33, 11. 263-264). Future citations are to this edition.

(7) The Holy Bible, Douay Version (Baltimore, 1899). Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations are from this translation.

(8) The first author in English to describe the Savior's six leaps in the Exeter manuscript was John Josias Conybeare in his popular commentary-anthology, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826; repr. New York: Haskell House, 1964), p. 202. He concludes: "Hence the poet infers that we ought, in like manner, to leap from excellence to excellence, till we ascend also into heaven" (p. 202).

(9) In support of the reference to the Ascension, MacKenzie cites Luke 24.49-51 and quotes John 16.7, but Matthew 28.7 and 16, as well as Mark 16.7 and John 21.1, offer more precise evidence for the apostles' post-Resurrection journey to Galilee and Jesus' presence there.

(10) Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Sermons and Devotional Writings, ed. Christopher Devlin, S. J. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 137-138.

(11) The Christ of Cynewulf, ed. Albert S. Cook (1909; Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1964), p. 135, nn. 633-658. Translation by Michael J. B. Allen and Daniel G. Calder, Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry: The Major Latin Texts in Translation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), p. 79.

(12) In fact, the Anglo-Saxon verb astigan means both "to ascend" and "to descend" (Cook, p. 230). See George Hardin Brown, "The Descent-Ascent Motif in Christ II of Cynewulf," in Cynewulf: Basic Readings, ed. Bjork, pp. 133-146.

(13) For more on the sources and imagery of "The Windhover," see James Finn Cotter, Inscape: The Christology and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 177-183.

(14) Quinn believes that John Lingard's two-volume work, The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, could have stimulated Hopkins' interest in Old English versification. The volumes were refectory reading in November 1871 while Hopkins was a Jesuit student of philosophy at St. Mary's at Stonyhurst (pp. 26-29). However, Lingard's chapter on pre-Norman Conquest poets and literature makes no mention of Cynewulf or the Christ.

(15) Further similarities between Christ and Hopkins' poems should be noted, for example, in a comparison of "The Last Judgment" with "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves" and "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection" with its echoes of air, flood, earth, fire, the darkness of death, the beam of the cross, a trumpet crash, and Christ "a precious stone/ ... for comfort / to mankind" (p. 73).