Gerard Manley Hopkins was an amazing poet from the 19th century. Hopkins was known for his unique style and his use of “sprung rhythm” in his poetry. His works often explored themes of nature, faith, and the beauty of the world. Sprung rhythm is a poetic technique that Hopkins developed. It’s all about creating a natural and lively rhythm in poetry. Instead of following a strict meter, Hopkins used stressed and unstressed syllables to create a rhythmic pattern that mimics the natural flow of speech. This gives his poems a vibrant and energetic feel. Hopkins believed that sprung rhythm allowed him to capture the essence and vitality of the world around him.
The poem “The Sea and the Skylark” deals with the two aspects of life. The poet gives a contrasting perspectives on the musical intonation produced by the natural world and the modern world. Hopkins tries to project the transitional society leading towards modernism where people are gradually detaching themselves from God’s creation. The material world of Victorian age and the scientific revolutions has a great impact on the consciousness of the people that the senses of humans have become numb and they are unable to rejoice the rhythm of natural world created by God.
Hopkins uses sprung rhythm in the poem to capture the musical essence of the natural world. The sound of the sea and the skylark bird is vividly captured in the reader’s imagination in the poem through sprung rhythm to absorb the beauty and essence of God’s creation. As the speaker is walking pass by the sea, he is immediately consumed by the sound of the sea and the waves creating a lullaby for the ears of man. He considers it to be the antique sounds that humans have heard in the world.
Furthermore, the same sprung rhythm is evident when he describe the musical voice of the skylark bird. He tries to translate these voices of the natural world in his poems through spring rhythm to elucidate the beauty and the peacefulness of God’s creation. By asking the reader’s to visualize the bird’s song as a musical score that flows from its neck and then falls like a fisherman’s line reeling out, the artwork aims to translate sound into sight. The line has kinks where the line has been forced into the reel, making it non-straight. A bar-line is represented by each kink. And in order for the bird to start over again as he swoops down, the line is being rewound onto another reel.
The poem symbolically suggest that the sea and the skylark are God’s creation and a gift to mankind. Symbolically, the poem centres around the the solipsistic nature of man who have detached away themselves from the primeval sounds of natural world. The numbness of human senses in the poem is symbolical of human solipsism. The poet is indicating that the engagement to the material world has numb the senses of human beings.
Hopkins muses on how unfortunate it is that the people no longer have the capacity to notice and value these creation sounds—the sea and the skylark. Humans have lost the ability to hear these two voices because of their greed and selfishness, despite the fact that they are the purest and most ancient sounds. Even if the modern world is nasty and dirty, these two sounds are still pure. Despite thinking of themselves as the anointed one or the rulers, humans are not trying to save the planet. Rather, they are destroying it—and doing so in a way that will ultimately bring about their own destruction.
The poem shows the transitional phase of Victorian age where he shows the impact of Darwin’s theory and the scientific materialism on the society. It is a tragedy that the poet muses in the poem where the poet addresses the modern life that centres around the scientific materialism away from God and religion. The inability of man to hear the musical flow of the sea and the skylark is a clear empirical evidence highlighting the impact of scientific materialism and Darwinian evolution theory in the consciousness of human mind.
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