Joyce Kilmer speaks to the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins with a mix of wonder and humility. He begins by questioning why Hopkins labored so painstakingly over his words, since many believe true song is simply the heart’s free, undisciplined outpouring. But he immediately rejects that notion: God himself assigned Hopkins this holy task. Hopkins is an “austere, ecstatic craftsman,” set apart from those who trade in the marketplace of poetry; his carefully phrased lines become a kind of paten that holds the Splendour of the divine.
Then Kilmer turns humble. He confesses that he and others carelessly fling a rhyme to God when other songs are finished. Hopkins, however, followed the mystical path of Saint Teresa, losing himself entirely. What he won, the poem suggests, is paradox: bleeding feet shod with peace and glory, a happy moth that flew straight into the Sun. The closing mood is reverent, almost envious awe, celebrating a devotion where art is a total, joyful self-immolation.