ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the Hopkins's poem 'The Starlight Night'. It is the second of the ten sonnets Hopkins wrote in 1877, his final year at St Beuno's, leading up to his ordination in September. It is dated 24 February, the day after God's Grandeur, Hopkins sent both sonnets to Bridges that April. Like all these sonnets, it celebrates nature; or rather, it celebrates Christ as the creator of nature. Besides the beauty of the stars, the octet gives us their mysterious order; their pre-dawn magic; the sense we have of their movement, like rippling leaves or doves in flight. The sestet is equally insistent on how we may possess such beauty: through action, Christian devotion. Then, with a remarkable leap of thought, Hopkins makes us see that even all this beauty is only external, 'the barn', 'the paling'; the true beauty, the harvest is within: Christ and His Mother and all the saints.
