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The Wreck of the Deutschland
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The Wreck of the Deutschland

poem by Hopkins
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History

The Wreck of the Deutschland, ode by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written in the mid-1870s and published posthumously in 1918 in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. One of Hopkinsā€™s longest poems, comprising 35 eight-line stanzas, it commemorates the death of five Franciscan nuns, exiled from Germany, who drowned when their ship, the Deutschland, ran aground near Kent, England, on December 6ā€“7, 1875. It was the first poem Hopkins wrote in seven years, having abstained from verse writing upon his decision to become a Jesuit priest.

Following a general invocation at the beginning of the work, the bulk of the poem describes the shipwreck, focusing on one particular nun whose final agony is compared to the Passion of Jesus Christ. The ode concludes with a prayer for the religious conversion of England.

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