SOURCE: "Uttering Truth: The Aphorism in the Poem," in Thought, Vol. 65, No. 259, December, 1990, pp. 544-49.

In the following essay, Motto describes how aphorism functions in Hopkins's poetry.

It is an often cited paradox that Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet identified with a seemingly unstoppable lyrical onrush of imagery, is also the poet who fits that lyrical onrush into poems so short that they sit two on a page. Similarly, the concentrated stresses of Hopkins's sprung rhythm seem to cram the short space of his line with sound and meaning. And while Hopkins often had his eye on larger-than-life people in the midst of heroic effort—the nun, Harry Ploughman, Felix Randal at the forge and then rising to God—he also trained his eye in admiration on the small and seemingly insignificant: the small child crying because leaves were falling, a skylark, a man who achieved sainthood by...