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Poems for study » Hurrahing in Harvest » Language and tone in Hurrahing in Harvest

Alliterative phrases

The vocabulary of the sonnet works as powerfully as its imagery: the two can hardly be separated:

  • ‘barbarous in beauty’ is a striking phrase, an oxymoron, since barbarity usually suggests ugliness
  • The b-alliteration is emphatic, as we think perhaps of the stooks (sheaves) as spears or other weapons
  • Similar alliterating phrases that catch our ear are ‘wind-walks’; ‘silk-sack’, ‘wilful-wavier’, ‘world-wielding’.
More on Hopkins’ alliteration: Alliterative phrases are Hopkins’ trademark, deriving from Old English poetry, where similar compound phrases are known as ‘kennings’. Hopkins makes them alliterate, as if he really is fascinated by their patterns and sounds, whereas they do not have to be in Old English.

Biblical echoes

A key feature of the sonnet is the verbal echoes of biblical language. Hopkins had always studied the Bible, even before he started studying to be a priest. Even a simple, dramatic phrase like ‘Summer ends now’ has its echo in the Bible:

‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.’ (Jeremiah 8:20)

We have already mentioned another phrase: ‘I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes’ as echoing a Psalm, but it also echoes Jesus’ words:

‘Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35 AV).

The very title of ‘hurrahing’ may have been derived from Isaiah 55:12:

‘for you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you with singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.’

Certainly Isaiah (an Old Testament prophet) is as celebratory of nature as Hopkins, seeing the natural echoing the supernatural.

Investigating Hurrahing in Harvest
  • Pick out other examples of alliterating word clusters.
    • Which ones do you find memorable?
Today's New International Version
20'The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.'
King James Version
20The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
Today's New International Version
35Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest''? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
King James Version
35Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
Today's New International Version
12You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
King James Version
12For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
A Figure of speech in which two apparently opposite words or ideas are put together as if they were in agreement.
Alliteration is a device frequently used in poetry or rhetoric (speech-making) whereby words starting with the same consonant are used in close proximity- e.g. 'fast in fires', 'stars, start'.
The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament scriptures inherited from Judaism, together with the New Testament, drawn from writings produced from c.40-125CE, which describe the life of Jesus and the establishment of the Christian church.
A person whose role is to carry out religious functions.
(A 'testament' is a covenant or binding agreement and is a term used in the Bible of God's relationship with his people). The sacred writings of Judaism (the Hebrew Bible). These also form the first part of the Christian Bible.
Someone who conveys God's message to human beings or speaks about the future sometimes through words alone, sometimes through dramatic actions.

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely
behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our
Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding
shoulder
Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!--
These things, these things were here and but the
beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off
under his feet.

 
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