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The Candle Indoors

The Candle Indoors. G M Hopkins. Background. The crisis of faith, may be dated about 1860, The 1850s had been a period of relative religious calm, in which unquestioning churchgoers had little to trouble them

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The Candle Indoors

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  1. The Candle Indoors G M Hopkins

  2. Background • The crisis of faith, may be dated about 1860, • The 1850s had been a period of relative religious calm, in which unquestioning churchgoers had little to trouble them • Then in 1859 appeared Darwin's Origin of Species, the most famous of the challenges to faith, which questioned both the literal accuracy of the first chapters of Genesis and the argument from design for the existence of God. To retain a traditional Bible-centered faith in the 1870s, an educated man had either to deny the findings of biblical criticism and natural science, supported by an increasing mass of evidence, or else to re-create that faith on a new basis which few were able to construct.

  3. The Candle Indoors • Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful backWith yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all blackOr to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. • By that window what task what fingers ply,I plod wondering a-wanting just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or JackThere God to aggrandise, God to glorify. — • Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault;You there are master, do your own desire; • What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a faultIn a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liarAnd, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt.

  4. Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.

  5. I muse at how its being puts blissful backWith yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black

  6. Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.

  7. By that window what task what fingers ply,

  8. I plod wondering a-wanting just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or JackThere God to aggrandise, God to glorify.

  9. Come you indoors, come home

  10. your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault;

  11. You there are master, do your own desire;

  12. What hinders?

  13. Are you beam-blind,

  14. yet to a faultIn a neighbour deft-handed?

  15. Are you that liar

  16. cast by conscience out

  17. spendsavour salt?

  18. Themes / Issues • explores one of Hopkins' major themes: the inability to take up faith. • octet relates the thoughts of the faithless wanderer, who, seeing the candle in the window, recognizes its power to dispel the darkness.

  19. the sestet seems to pose a challenge to the speaker of the octet, asking "what hinders?" • Is this actually the same speaker or some other figure who asks him to come indoors?

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