Why do we bless soldiers on sight? Hopkins opens with a blunt, almost impatient question, and the first answer he gives is not flattering. The "redcoats" and "tars" are, for the most part, "frail clay, nay but foul clay." The correction in that line, with "nay but" retracting the politer word, shows a speaker who won't let sentiment pass without checking it. The rest of the octave explains how our goodwill actually works. We bless soldiers because the heart is proud of the profession, "calls the calling manly," and so assumes the men inside it must be worthy. The poem is about a habit of mind: we mistake the costume for the person.
The verbs show this most clearly. The heart "guesses," then "hopes," then "makes-believe," then "fancies, feigns, deems." Each step is a little less honest than the last. "Feigns" is the giveaway, since it admits the belief is a pretence. The verb "dears" is Hopkins's own coinage, and it describes a heart that loves the artist for his art without asking whether the man is any good. By the final line of the octave, the heart takes everything "smart" (neat, showy, well turned out) to be "sterling," genuine silver. The "scarlet" coat is made to "express" the "spirit of war." Appearance is passing itself off as virtue, and the sound of the lines suggests how easily it happens. The alliterating f's and d's slide along quickly, like a crowd carried by its own enthusiasm.
At line nine the poem turns, as a sonnet should, and the tone changes completely: "Mark Christ our King." The sceptic gives way to a believer, and the argument gives way to a picture. Christ "knows war, served this soldiering through," so the soldier's trade is one he has shared. The line "He of all can handle a rope best" is deliberately open. A rope belongs to the sailors the octave mentioned, and it may also hint at hardship or violence, but the poem doesn't spell out which. What follows is far more physical than anything in the first half. Christ, "in bliss" in heaven, sees "somewhere some man do all that man can do," and cannot keep still. He "leans forth," falls on the man's neck and kisses him. The stiff language of rank and uniform is replaced by an embrace.
The poem's answer to its own question is therefore double. Our blessing of soldiers is often shallow, resting on red cloth and pride. Yet the instinct points toward something real, because genuine courage, a man doing everything a man can, is exactly what Christ recognises and loves. His cry, "O Christ-done deed!", is a compound in Hopkins's usual style. It claims that the act belongs to Christ as much as to the soldier, and the closing lines go further: "Were I come o'er again... it should be this." If Christ were to live again, he says, he would do the same. The soldier's bravery becomes an echo of the Incarnation, "God-made-flesh."
The form supports this movement. The rhymes in the octave are tightly bound, ABBAABBA, built on just two sounds (*bless, guess, less, express* and *part, heart, art, smart*). That repetition gives the sense of a closed circle, with the heart rhyming with its own illusions. The sestet loosens into alternating rhymes (*through, do, too* against *bliss, kiss, this*), and the last rhyme, "this," is only a near-match for "bliss" and "kiss." The ending feels settled but unforced. Throughout, the lines are heavy with stresses and pushed by strong pauses, as in "Yes. Why do we all...", so they sound more like spoken argument than smooth verse. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest, and that fits a poem that reasons its way toward devotion.
The poem is significant because it refuses both easy flag-waving and easy cynicism. It sees through the glamour of the uniform, then finds a deeper kind of honour beneath it, one that has nothing to do with scarlet and everything to do with a deed done fully.