Gerard Manley Hopkins - Stratford

Gerard Manley Hopkins born 28 July 1844, Stratford was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest. He wrote many poems including The Wreck of the Deutschland, The Caged Skylark and The Sea and the Skyark. Hopkins spent the last five years of his life as a classics professor at University College Dublin. Hopkins’ isolation in 1885 was multiple: a Jesuit distanced from his Anglican family and his homeland, an Englishman teaching in Dublin during a time of political strife, an unpublished poet striving to reconcile his artistic and religious callings. The poem "To seem the stranger" was written in Ireland between 1885-1886, and is a poem of isolation and loneliness. He died 8 June 1889 (aged 44) in Dublin and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.