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The Windhover
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
A Study of Poetry
4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:
Poetry: First Lines
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The Windhover

sonnet by Hopkins
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History

The Windhover, sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, completed in May 1877 and collected posthumously in 1918 in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Written shortly before Hopkinsā€™s ordination as a Jesuit priest, the poem is dedicated ā€œto Christ our Lord.ā€ It concerns Hopkinsā€™s philosophy of inscape, the essential nature of a person or thing.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.