Philippine E-Journals

DURING a seminar conducted by Mr. Richard Eberhart for students from the Catholic University in Washington early January of 1960, the then Poet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress broached the question of the Catholicity of one of Hopkins' poems. “The Windhover" had just been read and discussed: there was no doubt in the minds of both lecturer and the small assembly (mostly of nuns) that the poem was truly "Catholic.'' The same author's "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" brought up doubts, however. Apparently, the sentiments of pessimism, even fatalism, were not in consonance with the notion of an all-good God: "[Sorrow] is the blight man was born for..... "