The remarkable genius of Gerard Manley Hopkins' visual perception,
as revealed in his journals and poems, is a product of the intensity
with which the poet conceives a thing in terms of the physical action
prompted by it, and is the result of the vibrant joining of perceiver
and percept. He defines a scene so that the reader may see and praise
God, the Creator of each thing in the landscape. The joining of God,
perceiver, and percept is a dynamic communion charged with energy.
According to Hopkins, the flow of language should match the original
sensation of the single unified effect upon the beholder of the scene;
such a sensation appears in direct relationship to the intensity of the
poet's visual interpretation of the scene.