At the Wedding March

By Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844–1889 Gerard Manley Hopkins

God with honour hang your head,

Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed

With lissome scions, sweet scions,

Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other’s comfort kind:

Déep, déeper than divined,

Divine charity, dear charity,

Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:

I to him turn with tears

Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,

Déals tríumph and immortal years.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Biography

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the three or four greatest poets of the Victorian era. He is regarded by different readers as the greatest Victorian poet of religion, of nature, or of melancholy. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognized until after World War I.

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