ABSTRACT
The Wreck of the Deutschland is Hopkins's first, and many would say his greatest, mature poem. When in the winter of 1875 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the Thames and five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned Hopkins was affected by the account and he was happened to say to his rector that he wished someone would write a poem on the subject. The poem is at the same time clearly autobiographical. The poem's ultimate subject, is the paradox of suffering; or, as Hopkins put it in his notes on the Spiritual Exercises, 'the great sacrifice', the reliving of Christ's Passion and Crucifixion. The conviction that he could devote a poem to this all-important theme justified for him the breaking of his self-imposed seven years' silence. This poem is thus not only a deeply personal religious poem, but a great technical achievement, full of the vitality of experiment.
