erard Manley Hopkins wrote "The Lantern out of Doors" in 1877, at the end of his final period of theological training in North Wales. He was sent to the Jesuit house of St Bueno's, Asaph, in the hope that it would benefit his "health and spirits" (Introduction, x-xi), and indeed it was a happy interlude for him, and one that turned to be hugely important in his development as a poet. The themes that his early poems introduce would underly his subsequent poetry too. But comparison with "The Candle Indoors," written in 1879, shows how quickly the certainties they turn on would be challenged in the years ahead.
To Hopkins's last year at St Bueno's belong some of his best-loved sonnets. These are the ones in which he bursts out in praise of God, in an outpouring of religious feeling that had been building up throughout the previous few years, but which had so far been expressed only in his journal. Poems like "God's Grandeur" and "Pied Beauty" represent what Bernard Bergonzi calls "pure and memorable statements of his sacramental vision" (88). But he was about to move on from St Asaph's. 1877 was a turning-point. It was the very year of his ordination. From now on he would become something of an itinerant. "Throughout his ministry," says his John Gilroy,
a Jesuit priest expects to be moved from place to place. In the seven years that followed his ordination Hopkins was variously Sub-minister in Chesterfield, Select Preacher at Farm Street Church in Mayfair, London, and a priest at Oxford, Bedford Leigh, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as being teacher of classics at Stonyhurst. [20]
As Gilroy goes on to suggest, the sheer number of placements may indicate his superiors' difficulty in finding the right slot for such a sensitive young priest. But what matters here is that in 1877 Hopkins could "expect" to be moved around a lot. The attachments that he had formed at St Bueno's would be broken, and more such separations were bound to follow.
This, as Norman White also suggests (see 269-70), is the background to "The Lantern Out of Doors."
The Lantern out of Doors
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
The speaker here finds himself thinking of friends and acquaintances who brighten and enrich our lives in passing, and whom we regret losing when circumstances change. He is heartfelt in his gratitude to them: they enrich us beyond measure, even in the limited time of our friendship or contact, like light shed on the heaviest of shadows. In the use of this imagery Hopkins inevitably brings to mind the vision of Christ himself — notably, the figure painted in the early 1850s by William Holman Hunt in The Light of the World. Hopkins had met Holman Hunt in Hampstead on one of his vacations from Oxford (see White 82), and anyway coud not have escaped knowing this extraordinarily popular work. Hunt's Jesus carries a lantern in one hand, and with the other knocks for admission at the door of the soul. But however much they may reflect Christ himself, human friends, Hopkins acknowledges, move on — or we ourselves move on. Life sweeps us along in unpredictable ways, and try as we might, we cannot maintain the closeness we once enjoyed.
William Holman Hunt's The Light of the World (1851-53).
Losing touch with treasured companions is often a matter of regret and guilt. Yet, despite the negative implications of "our much-thick and marsh air," this is by no means a bleak poem. Hopkins provides both a consolation and reassurance. The speaker consoles himself by thinking that Christ cares for these lost friends, not just when they first pass out of sight, as we human beings tend to do, and not just for a while afterwards either, but forever. Troubled by the prospect of severing ties, he reassures himself by placing his trust for others' safe-keeping in the saviour of the New Testament, whose capacity to care is far beyond that of any earthly friend's. In this way, while Hopkins reminds us of our limitations as human beings, he offers the comforting certainty of alternative, limitless spiritual support for those whose company is lost.
This meditation on a common experience is expressed and dramatised by the symbolism of the lantern in darkness, which rains its beams almost palpably on those whom it passes, but which, within our everyday life, gradually fades into the distance, and becomes harder and harden to follow until it vanishes from sight. Darkness descends again on the bereft — only to be lightened by Hopkins in the certainty of those last lines:
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
The light reflected in our human relationships comes ultimately, Hopkins implies here, from an inexhaustible source, one that never diminishes.
Hopkins saw his later poem "The Candle Indoors" (written in Oxford in 1879) as a "companion" to this poem — "not at first meant to be though, but it fell in" (qtd. in Gardner 234). But at first there seems to be very little in common between the two, besides the imagery of light.
The Candle Indoors
Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering a-wanting just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There/God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault;
You there are master, do you own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
William Daniels's The Song of the Shirt (1875).
In this sonnet, the speaker is the passer-by. What he sees is not a lantern outside, coming close to him and then receding, but flickering candlelight inside, emanating from some indoor space occupied by a stranger, whether a "Jessy or Jack." He cannot help wondering "what task, what fingers ply" in that candlelit room. This brings to mind, not The Light of the World, as Gilroy suggests when looking at this poem (although, curiously, he fails to mention it in connection with the earlier one) but a different work. Hopkins had been familiar with Thomas Hood's poetry since boyhood: the two families had been neighbours in Stratford (see Feeny 5). Hood's description in "The Song of the Shirt" of a poor seamstress was illustrated later in William Daniels's much-praised "The Song of the Shirt" (1875), in which the seamstress pauses wearily in her sewing by candlelight. In his own poem, Hopkins imagines the passer-by responding to the light within by anxiously hoping that whoever is present there, in whatever situation, can reach out to God in praise — and, by implication, find salvation:
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There/God to aggrándise, God to glorify —
But then, as so often in this poet's work, comes the turn of thought, the adjustment of viewpoint, but not, this time, to a consoling effect. The "you" the speaker addresses is surely himself. Looking into this self, interrogating it from the outside just as he would like to have interrogated "Jessy or Jack," he asks whether he himself worships God. He has been quick ("deft-handed") to query someone else's spiritual state. But when it comes to his own, is he in denial about it ("blind" to the light, lying to himself, rejected by his own conscience)? In other words, is his own faith genuine? Is his own salvation assured?
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
This is so different from the simple trust expressed in the earlier poem. This is, instead, the Hopkins we know from the Terrible Sonnets, riven by doubt, probing deeply, unable to answer questions about his own faith. The reproach here, in the poem itself, is sharp. The reference in "spendsavour salt" in the last line is to Matthew 5, 13: "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" This is Jesus's stern warning to his disciples against losing the purity and efficacy so essential to their calling. Having analysed himself, Hopkins is deeply alarmed at the turmoil he finds.
Apart from his use of another "unforgettable optical image" here (Introduction xiv), the one common factor between these two sonnets is the sense of the speaker's own inadequacy. This was something he could accept in "Lantern out of Doors," because he trusted entirely in a loving God, who would compensate for it; in "The Candle Indoors," written now that Hopkins was established in his priestly role, and freighted with the responsibility for bringing others to God, the speaker's conscience is not so readily appeased. He is far more troubled by it now. There is no easy answer here, only a series of questions about whether or not he lives up to expectations. And although his doubts are couched as questions, the suspicion that he is betraying his calling is strong.
What, we might ask, can be the appeal of such a poem? Why do we appreciate "The Candle Indoors" as much as the earlier poem with its more satisfying conclusion? In general, close attention is paid to Hopkins's "difficulty" — the eccentricity of his prosody, the intentional tortuousness of such constructions as "wind/ What most I may eye after," and the striving for effect in unique portmanteau descriptions like "to-fro tender truckbeams." But the purpose of these, after all, is to convey universal feelings. That is the key here. Both poems express, in their different ways, inescapable human experiences — one deals with the loss of those dear to us, a loss which punctuates our span on earth; the other, with renewed and increased fears of inadequacy, fears that periodically assail all but the brashest amongst us. By giving unforgettable form and rhythm to such feelings, Hopkins helps us to acknowledge and understand them better. His art itself serves as a kind of lantern or candle in the darkness, making us aware that we are not alone, and lighting us on our own journeys into an unpredictable future.
Bibliography
Bergonzi, Bernard. Gerard Manley Hopkins>. London: Macmillan, 1977.
Feeney, Jospeh J. The playfulness of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2016.
Gardner, W. H., ed. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
Gilroy, John. Hopkins: A Study of Selected Poems. Penrith: HEB Humanities-Ebooks, 2016.
Introduction. The Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ware, Herts.: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994. ix-xvii.
White, Norman. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Created 3 October 2022