Victorian poetry and religious diversity- Yet his careful use of line breaks extends his English identity as a
"stranger" in Ireland to his own Anglican family. Thus the line "Among
strangers. Father and mother dear" reads not only as the start and end of
two different sentences but also as a unit in itself, indicating that his "dear"
parents are also "strangers" to him in some way. Likewise, the line
"Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near" carries a double meaning. His
siblings are at once literally not "near" him (geographically) and meta-
phorically not "near" him (spiritually). This semantic and structural
doubleness continues past the line break: "Christ not near / And he my
peace/my parting." In short, his Roman Catholic alliance to Christ is
simultaneously a cause for "peace" and "parting" - a source of both
religious sustenance and social alienation. Despite their expression of
religious estrangement from England, however, the first four lines show a
commitment to aspects of English poetic convention. Hopkins establishes a
clear pentameter in all four lines. But this adherence to traditional meter
does not extend to rhythm as well as line length, for by the second line the
iambs are clearly broken by the caesura after the significant phrase "Among
strangers," a caesura that arises since "strangers" is a trochee. Here the
common rhythms of English verse may not serve him, or at least come
easily when living outside of England.
The complex negotiations of poetic, religious, and social identities
become the focus of the next quatrain that focuses on marriage through a
striking reference to "woo[ing]" England, figured as a wife. In addition, the
metrical innovation also increases in this second half of the octave:
England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
To my creating thought, would neither hear
Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
Y of idle a being but by where wars are rife. (5-8)These lines institute a clear relationship between Hopkins's creative process
and his religious affiliation. "England" fails to hear his wooing or pleading,
two conventional activities of the traditional male sonneteer in pursuit of
his lady. Hopkins makes it plain that while his religious commitments are
to Roman Catholicism, his literary commitments have a national alle-
giance. England stands as the "wife" or partner to his poetic production,
and so the fact that England rejects him by not "hear[ing]" his Roman
Catholic voice results in a block to his creative activity. To be heard, the
poet suggests, is not a privilege that he would enjoy even if he did "plead"
his case, and he notes that he does not "plead" because of his own internal
"wars" that "wear- / Y" his being. Challenging the heterosexual desires that
often motivate the traditional English sonnet, Hopkins offers a critical
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