Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Version 2): Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Version 2), credited to Gerard Manley Hopkins, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Version 2) by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Read in English by MichaelMaggs Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was one of the most innovative of English Victorian poets, best known now for his vivid and original imagery of the natural world in verses such as “The Windhover” and “Pied Beauty”. Hopkins was a master of miniaturisation and condensation. His poetry is characterised by freshness, concentrated originality and often unconventional syntax in which words may have multiple shades of meaning. One of his most important innovations was what he called “sprung rhythm”, a style intended to be read aloud in which — like natural speech — the stressed syllables ‘spring’ between a variable number of unstressed syllables, and in which the poetic lines are defined not by number of syllables but by number of stresses. At the age of 24 Hopkins converted to Catholicism and began training as a Jesuit priest. For seven years he wrote no poetry at all, believing that he was not called by God to do so. This period ended with a concentrated explosion of originality with “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, his greatest and longest poem (number 4 in this collection) which is dedicated to the memory of five nuns who lost their lives while attempting the sea passage from Germany to England in 1875. Sometimes considered ‘difficult’ by readers who approach it in printed form, the poem’s outlines become clearer when read aloud. It is divided into two sections, an introductory part in which the poet discourses with wonder on the sudden return of his poetic muse after so many fallow years; and a second part in which he describes with dramatic pace the fate of the ship as it hurtles in the storm and snow to its doom on the Kentish sands. At its heart the poem celebrates, in extraordinarily vivid and imaginative terms, the spiritual vision of a nun whose entire attention is absorbed by Christ even as all around her is chaos and terror. Most of Hopkins’ poetry was unpublished and completely unknown until nearly 30 years after his death when in 1918 Robert Bridges, his old friend and by then Poet Laureate, brought out this book. Hopkins’ originality was soon recognised, and his verse has had a marked influence on many later poets including TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. (Michael Maggs)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Version 2)
• Author credits: Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 75
• Listed recording duration: 3:08:06

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• wreck deutschland
• windhover
• pied beauty
• kingfishers fire
• heaven haven
• hurrahing harvest
• gods grandeur

Opening tracks: first 24 of 75

1. 00 - Author's Preface — 11:30
2. 01 - For a Picture of St. Dorothea — 1:59
3. 02 - Heaven—Haven — 0:45
4. 03 - The Habit of Perfection — 2:53
5. 04 - The Wreck of the Deutschland — 22:59
6. 05 - Penmaen Pool — 2:53
7. 06 - The Silver Jubilee — 1:36
8. 07 - God’s Grandeur — 1:29
9. 08 - The Starlight Night — 1:34
10. 09 - Spring — 1:27
11. 10 - The Lantern out of Doors — 1:30
12. 11 - The Sea and the Skylark — 1:36
13. 12 - The Windhover — 1:44
14. 13 - Pied Beauty — 1:10
15. 14 - Hurrahing in Harvest — 1:39
16. 15 - The Caged Skylark — 1:32
17. 16 - In the Valley of the Elwy — 1:30
18. 17 - The Loss of the Eurydice — 8:43
19. 18 - The May Magnificat — 3:01
20. 19 - Binsey Poplars — 1:57
21. 20 - Duns Scotus’s Oxford — 1:45
22. 21 - Henry Purcell — 2:28
23. 22 - Peace — 1:24
24. 23 - The Bugler’s First Communion — 4:18

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.