A Mother's Love

"The Virgin Compared to the Air"

I say we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air; the same
Is Mary. . . .
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence.

…

. He describes her as a maternal figure who "came to mould (Christ's) limbs like ours" (lines 104-5) as well as stating that "her hand leaves his light/ sifted to suit our sight" (lines 112-13).

Worldmothering air, air wild
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child." [lines 124-26]

~Catherine Hay, Mother's love — How Maternal projection is used to explore spirituality in the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins and Charles Algernon Swinburne

………………….

During his lifetime, Hopkins published few poems. It was only through the efforts of Robert Bridges that his works were seen. Despite Hopkins burning all his poems on entering the Jesuit novitiate, he had already sent some to Bridges who, with a few other friends, was one of the few people to see many of them for some years. After Hopkins's death they were distributed to a wider audience, mostly fellow poets, and in 1918 Bridges, by then poet laureate, published a collected edition.

Notable collections of Hopkins's manuscripts and publications are in Campion Hall, Oxford; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Foley Library at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.