Monday July 31, 2006

The Reluctant Dragon

in today’s Hagar the Horrible:

Those who prefer higher culture
may consult

The Dragon in the Gate:
Studies in the Poetry
of G. M. Hopkins,
by
Elisabeth Wintersteen Schneider.

Schneider’s title comes from a
description of Hopkins’s poem
“The Wreck of the Deutschland.”

“This epic poem was described by perhaps his closest friend, Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, as, ‘the dragon folded at the gate to forbid all entrance’ to the appreciation of his other works. More favorable is the opinion of the most thorough of Hopkins’s critics, W. H. Gardner, who described it as a great symphony or overture, introducing his other works and not forbidding them.”

— “Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Priest and Poet,”
     by Bro. Anthony Joseph