ABSTRACT
Henry Purcell was the third of the nine poems Hopkins wrote during the ten months, December 1878 to October 1879, he spent as a priest at St Aloysius's Church, Oxford. It is dated April 1879. The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally. Henry Purcell is one of his finest, most rewarding sonnets; it has also great interest on several other counts. It was the first sonnet he wrote in Alexandrines, six-feet lines, with a stress to each foot: the complexity of the thought certainly needed the longer metre. Hopkins's explanation still leaves difficulties: as they are solved, the sonnet's daring beauties, musical and linguistic, fall into place.
