4, the Wreck, of the Deutschland
To thehappy memory of five Franciscan Nunsexiles by the Falk Lawsdrowned between midnight and morning ofDec. 7th.
About this text
4, the Wreck, of the Deutschland is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published, Project Gutenberg ebook #22403; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Gerard Manley Hopkins, 4, the Wreck, of the Deutschland, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22403, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hopkins-poems/4-the-wreck-of-the-deutschland.html, id L04374.
Form and metre
4, the Wreck, of the Deutschland is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 6.2 syllables.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To the | 2 | ·· |
| happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns | 10 | /˘/˘··˘/˘· |
| exiles by the Falk Laws | 6 | /····· |
| drowned between midnight and morning of | 10 | ·˘··/··/˘· |
| Dec. 7th. | 3 | ·// |
Notes from the edition 1
Robert Bridges's notes to Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918; Project Gutenberg #22403).
- WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND. Text from B, title from A (see description of B on p. 94). In 'The Spirit of Man' the original first stanza is given from A, and varies; otherwise B was not much corrected. Another transcript, now at St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, was made by Rev. F. Bacon after A but before the correction of B. This was collated for me by the Rev. Father Geoffrey Bliss, S.J., and gave one true reading. Its variants are distin- guished by G in the notes to the poem. The labour spent on this great metrical experiment must have served to establish the poet's prosody and perhaps his diction: therefore the poem stands logically as well as chronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragon folded in the gate to forbid all entrance, and confident in his strength from past success. This editor advises the reader to circumvent him and attack him later in the rear; for he was himself shamefully worsted in a brave frontal assault, the more easily perhaps because both subject and treatment were distasteful to him. A good method of approach is to read stanza 16 aloud to a chance company. To the metrist and rhythmist the poem will be of interest from the first, and throughout. Stanza iv. 1. 7. Father Bliss tells me that the Voel is a mountain not far from St. Beuno's College in N. Wales, where the poem was written: and Dr. Henry Bradley that moel is primarily an adj. meaning bald: it becomes a fem, subst. meaning bare hill, and preceded by the article y becomes voel, in modern Welsh spelt foel. This accounts for its being written without initial capital, the word being used genetically; and the meaning, obscured by roped, is that the well is fed by the trickles of water within the flanks of the mountains.--Both A and B read planks for flanks; G gives the correction. St. xi. 5. Two of the required stresses are on we dream. St. xii. 8. reeve, see note on Author's Preface, p. 101. St. xiv. 8. these. G has there; but the words between shock and these are probably parenthetical. St. xvi. 3. Landsmen may not observe the wrongness: see again No. 17, st. ix, and 39, line 10. I would have cor- rected this if the euphony had not accidentally forbidden the simplest correction. St. xvi. 7. foam-fleece followed by full stop in A and B, by a comma in G. St. xix. 3. hawling thus spelt in all three. St. xxi. 2. G omits the. St. xxvi. 5 and …
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