SOURCE: "The Thought Structure of the The Wreck of the Deutschland," in Immortal Diamond: Studies in Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Norman Weyand, S.J., Sheed & Ward, 1949, pp. 333-50.

In the following essay, Boyle examines the major themes of The Wreck of the Deutschland, asserting that it is not a poem about the problem of suffering but a poem about the answer to the problem of suffering.

In 1877 Sidney Lanier was distressed by a problem that has troubled the minds of most men at one time or another (To Beethoven):

Hopkins had given his answer to that problem just a year or so before in The Wreck of the Deutschland. Perhaps Lanier would not have understood the answer even if he had had access to Hopkins' expression of it. But it is Christ's answer. It is St. Paul's answer. It is the answer of the Catholic Church. The...