'The Child is Father to the Man'

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

‘The child is father to the man.’
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.’
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.’
‘The child is father to the man!’
How can he be? The words are wild!

Cover image by Quinn Dombrowski

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In this triolet by British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899), a Victorian reading a Romantic gets Wordsworth in edge-wise.