76 chapter 2
performance is not reading with the eye but loud, leisurely, poetical (not rhe-
torical) recitation, with long rests, long dwells on the rhyme and other marked
syllables, and so on. This sonnet should be almost sung.”^85
But by assuming that a proper recitation is possible, readers overlook the
visual aspect of reading, and therefore miss the connection between the devel-
opment of Hopkins’s meters as a crucial aspect of his particular vision, as well
as how these poems exemplify the ways in which “meter” extends beyond the
poem itself and into the public domain of national salvation and the very pri-
vate domain of spiritual identity. My reading of Hopkins’s metrical marks im-
plies that any idealized or fetishized vocal performance of Hopkins’s poems—
indeed, of any poem—is a distorted (or selective) reading of nineteenth-century
prosodic practice. I’ll end this chapter, then, with a particularly stunning dis-
play of Hopkins’s simultaneous celebration of and dismay about the stigma of
meter (the marks from manuscripts A and B); a kind of frantic stressing and
marking that, nonetheless, we read with the hope that we will understand.
Spelt from Sybil’s Leaves
Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ʹ vaulty, voluminous, . . . stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ʹ womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-
of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ʹ her wild hollow
hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ʹ stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ʹ her being has unbound, her dapple
is at an end, as - 5
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; self ín self steedèd and
páshed—qúite
Disremembering, dísmémbering ʹ áll now. Heart, you round me
right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ʹ whélms, whélms, ánd will
end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ʹ damask the tool-smooth
bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ʹ Lét life, wáned, ah lét life
wind 10
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety ʹ upon, áll on twó
spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black, white; ʹ right, wrong ;
reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ʹ twó tell, each off
the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ʹ thóughts
agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.