Rethink.

Heaven-Haven
Gerard Manley Hopkins

A nun takes the veil

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Comment:

Take “heaven” and “haven” literally: the heavens are the skies, a haven is a sheltered port. The dash between the two suggests separation as much as linkage; are we moving from a heaven to a haven?

It seems there is a contrast. We can contrast “I have desired to go” with “I have asked to be,” and the imagery of the first stanza seems almost exclusively about the temperature and violence of the air, whereas the second stanza is about the temperament and violence of the sea. (I’m assuming a “spring” fails when it freezes or dries out).

But the “desire to go” sets up the eventual destination, whereas “asked to be” concerns the mode of transport. That crisscrossing – “desire” usually sets things in motion, “being” usually determines where something is at rest – alerts us that the relation isn’t as simple as contrast, even though there are points of contrast. The two stanzas are linked not just by the title, but also by the last line of the first stanza and the first line of the second:

And a few lilies blow. / And I have asked to be

Lilies were preceded by “where springs not fail,” where water and life are eternal. Around the “springs” are “fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,” where physical pain and prejudice are gone. The good in this stanza is defined by what it is not: the “veil” is implicit in the description. But there is one thing that stands in these fields which need not be perfect: lilies. They are still moved by the wind.

In the next stanza, again, the good is mainly defined by what it is not: no storms come. But “the green swell is in the havens dumb” – the green swell is there, there is some battle between Chaos and Order, but our speaker is out of the “swing of the sea,” culminating in a third “And.” That last sentence is ambiguous: it could be that the “green swell” is out of the “swing of the sea,” that the haven entraps the wave.

Either way, the poem leaves us, in meditating on the vows one makes in choosing the religious life, with two things that our speaker cannot negate: the “lilies” and the “green swell.” Our speaker sees that they are inescapably connected with her “desiring” and “being:” being is conceived in some relation to change (“green swell”), and “desiring” brings up the question of what we ultimately desire, the escape from failure and death.

Our speaker does not want to negate these things, though: the lilies are the memories we have of the dead and that – we hope – they have of us. Where she desires to go, those memories are still moving. In where she asks to be, the “green swell” is sidestepped. Creation is occurring, still. She has to stand outside of it not because her vows make her automatically holy, but because of the tension between “desiring” and “asking.” What she wants is not hers to have. It can only be given, and she is therefore in the most vulnerable of situations. The prayer is serene because the trust is complete.

• On Hopkins’ “The Caged Skylark”
• Yeats, “The Cold Heaven”
• Industry and Divinity: On Hopkins’ "God’s Grandeur"
• From Love to God: On Hopkins’ "As kingfishers catch fire…"
• Democracy’s Mysticism: Thoughts on "All Religions are One," by Blake

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