Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1877, served here as a relief temporary curate for two months in the autumn of 1881

It was not a happy time for him,  describing Glasgow as  being “like all great cities, a wretched place”. However,  he did prefer it to his previous posting in Liverpool, as Glasgow had some “fine buildings” and the people were ‘lively

Hopkins travelled to Loch Lomond on Wednesday 28 September 1881, after a long w/e of being on duty and conducting baptisms every day from Saturday – Tuesday. It is thought that this was the occasion when he wrote his famous poem “Inversnaid”, describing a Highland burn in spate.

 

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.