1Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
2Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
3Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some
4Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
5Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended
6Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
7Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
8Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
9This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
10My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
11Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
12How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
13When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
14Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!
"Felix Randal" is a sonnet written by the British poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1880 (though not published until 1918, after Hopkins's death). The speaker is a priest (generally taken to be Hopkins himself) who reflects on the death of a young man named Felix Randal, as well as on their priest-parishioner relationship in the latter's final days. The speaker provided spiritual comfort to Felix Randal as his life neared its end, and is deeply moved by the young man's passing. The speaker, however, doesn't dwell on death so much as paint a vivid picture of Felix Randal in the prime of his life—hard at work in his blacksmith's workshop. The poem, then, is somewhere between elegy and eulogy, both lamenting Felix Randal's death and celebrating his life. It was likely based on the real-life death of Felix Spencer, a young farrier (someone who makes and fits horseshoes) who died from tuberculosis at the age of 31.
Is Felix Randal, the young man who makes horseshoes, really dead? Are priestly duties really over for me—the person who watched Felix, a strong and handsome young man, cry and cry, until he finally was driven mad by his illness, which took hold of him and put him in great turmoil?
He was broken by his sickness. At first, he was impatient and angry about the prospect of death, but he improved when I anointed him with holy oil and so forth. Even before the anointment, he had started to turn towards God as a result of our lovely relationship. Oh well, may God forgive him for any sins he committed!
Taking care of the sick makes us love them more, and vice versa. Felix, my words helped you find solace, and my touch calmed your tears—while your tears moved me deeply, my child, poor Felix.
You would never have thought this could happen back in your stronger, louder days, when you were in your element: working hard in your dark farrier's workshop, respected by all those who worked with you, you who produced such beautiful and dependable horseshoes for the draft horses!
“Felix Randal” explores the relationship between a priest and a young man—the Felix Randal of the title—who has recently died. When the speaker learns of Felix’s death, he reflects on his role as a spiritual guide and friend to the young man in his final days. Through this, the poem explores how religion may act as source of comfort and solace to the dying—and particularly how religion can help someone come to terms with dying young. The poem also implies that the healing power of religion isn't a one-way street, as the speaker is deeply affected by his experiences with Felix Randal and finds purpose of his own in providing spiritual guidance.
The start of the poem makes clear that the speaker has been acting in an official capacity—that is, as an emissary of the church. He talks of his “duty” being over now that the young man has died, a turn of phrase that emphasizes the importance of spiritual comfort to the dying. This, the word "duty" implies, is the priest's purpose and something the dying need.
At the same time, the word "duty" might feel a bit cold and distant—perhaps too official and impersonal. Yet as the speaker goes on to discuss the effects that his counsel and spiritual authority had on Felix Randal during his final days, it becomes clear that this "duty" was nothing of the sort.
Understandably, Felix Randal was initially distraught at the prospect of dying young. He is described as “pining” and “impatient,” and clearly felt a sense of injustice regarding his bodily suffering. Soon enough, though, the speaker helped Felix Randal develop a "heavenlier heart"—a religious perspective that took him beyond this initial sense of injustice. While Felix Randal was angry with his bodily reality, the speaker taught him to look beyond the limits of his physical existence. The poem, then, implies that religion offers the sick a unique yet important form of comfort. According to the speaker’s account, religion was able to tangibly improve the young man’s final days by offering him a sense of peace and acceptance.
The poem also shows that the relationship between priest and his spiritual patient does not go solely in one direction. It’s clear that providing religious care to Felix Randal has had a profound effect on the speaker himself. The dying man’s tears—borne of both sorrow and acceptance—“touched” the speaker’s heart. The poem thus implies that the speaker’s religious authority is in part based on his own humanity—that is, his ability to empathize with the dying man’s spiritual and physical anguish.
“Felix Randal” reflects the idea that death come at any time, for anyone—no matter how young or strong. Though much of the poem concerns the more spiritual aspects of dying (and the priest’s role in preparing someone for death), the poem also more simply suggests that the dead should be remembered and celebrated for who they were in life. Through its remembrance of Felix Randal, it also subtly urges an appreciation for youth and vitality, given that death is inevitable.
Felix Randal is struck down by disease (probably tuberculosis) when he is still an impressive specimen of a man, and the poem makes a point of emphasizing his physical strength. He was “big-boned” and “hardy-handsome,” admired by his peers for his work as a farrier—someone who makes horseshoes (which is intense and arduous labor).
Despite the man’s youth and physical health, however, "[s]ickness" eventually "broke him." The poem thus reminds the reader that death can strike at anyone, anytime. As the poem acknowledges, death often feels like a remote possibility (it was something “far from” the young man's thoughts), but Felix Randal’s death shows that no-one is safe from its reach.
The poem doesn’t only emphasize the tragedy of death, however, as the speaker points out that “seeing the sick” makes the living love them more, and vice versa. Knowledge of death, the poem implies, makes life seem all the more precious, and shows how interpersonal relationships with others are brief but brilliant gifts. Subtly, then, the poem implores the reader to value what they already have, to appreciate their world before its gone (or, more accurately, before they themselves leave it).
The speaker makes a point of ending on a powerful image of strength and vitality: Felix Randal at his most alive and vibrant. He is depicted putting the finishing touches to the “bright and battering sandal[s]” (horseshoes) of a “great grey drayhorse,” a horse used for carrying heavy loads. This is the young man in his element, using his own skill and strength to enable another living creature to move through its own life more powerfully and purposefully.
Felix Randal, in death, becomes an affirmation of life itself—vibrant, bright, and powerful. And in a sense, Felix Randal does this for the speaker too. In the last months of Felix Randal’s life, the two men embrace the emotions surrounding death without flinching, perhaps suggesting that this, though difficult, is the best way to approach death: with open eyes and an open heart.
Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then?
The first stanza establishes two things: that someone named Felix Randal had died, and the nature of the relationship between Felix Randal and the speaker, a priest. The poem is generally viewed as being autobiographical, with the speaker closely linked to Hopkins—who was in fact a Jesuit priest. (Hopkins changed the surname of the real-life Felix, however—more on that at the end of this analysis!).
The poem opens with a question that seems strangely casual, and perhaps suggests something about how priests are expected to behave. That is, it's not immediately clear that Felix Randal's death has had any major effect on the speaker—as though he is expected to maintain a kind of professional spiritual distance from his flock (his community), and can't make any great display of emotion (though he may feel pain inside).
But the way that the speaker phrases the first part of this question—"Felix Randal the farrier"—hints at the speaker's admiration for the dead young man. This type of description, in which a person's name is linked to something about them (e.g., a particular quality, like "Alexander the Great", or, as in this case, their occupation), is known as an epithet. This epithet conveys a kind of purity—that is, Felix Randal was such a good farrier (a blacksmith that shoes horses), that it's reasonable to define him by his work. That said, this could also be the speaker's way of specifying exactly who it is that has just died—Felix Randal the farrier (as opposed, perhaps, to some other person in his care, e.g., John Smith the tailor).
Though the reader doesn't yet know that Felix Randal was a strong young man, cut down in his prime, the alliteration, consonance, and assonance in this description hint at his impressive physical condition prior to death—"Felix Randal the farrier." Try saying this out loud; there is something noticeably strong, robust and even proud about the sound of these words.
my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Unlock all 373 words of this analysis of Lines 1-2 of “Felix Randal,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Get LitCharts A+Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him.
Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!
Felix Randal was a farrier—someone who makes and fits horseshoes. The poem creates a strong bond between the man and his occupation, signalled by the speaker's use of epithet—"the farrier"—in the first line. The poem thus closely associates Felix Randal himself with the symbolic connotations of his job. Broadly speaking, in the poem horses and horseshoes represent vitality, strength, and youthful vigor—all of which Felix Randal possessed before becoming ill.
For one thing, horses are powerful, muscular, and graceful creatures—qualities also evoked in the speaker's description of Felix Randal in line 2. The speaker even calls him a "mould of man," perhaps alluding to the molds that would be used to create metal horseshoes and further linking the young man to his work.
Horses are also traveling animals. The "great grey drayhorse" mentioned in line 14 would have been a cart horse, helping people transport goods (or even other people) to far-flung places. There is another symbolic idea here, then; travel is a kind of transition between one place and the next, which here maps onto Felix Randal's journey from life to death (and, perhaps, to the afterlife).
While Felix Randal was a skilled craftsman who helped horses to travel more comfortably and reliably, the poem depicts him needing help to prepare for his own final trip. Nevertheless, it's for his skill that the speaker believes Felix Randal should be remembered. The final image—"the bright and battering sandal" (another reference to a horseshoe)—is a symbol of achieved perfection that takes on almost mythical properties. That is, the horseshoe is not just any horseshoe, but a perfect one—and a potent symbol of Felix Randal's once-vibrant life-force.
Alliteration is very common throughout Gerard Manley Hopkins's poetry, and "Felix Randal" is no exception. Generally speaking, this poem uses alliteration to intensify its images—to make them more vivid and lively on the page and to the ear.
The first example of alliteration is in the poem's opening line: "Felix Randal the farrier." This type of description uses what is known as an epithet, in which a person's name is linked to something defining about them, like their occupation or a particular trait (e.g., Alfred the Great). In this case, the alliteration makes the bond between name—Felix—and job—farrier—extra strong, as though in tribute to the nature of this work itself. That is, a farrier (someone who makes and fits horseshoes), has to create strong, dependable objects—reliable joins between different pieces of metal and, of course, between the horseshoe and the horse's hooves. The strong sonic link between "Felix" and "farrier," then, not only links the dead man to a picture of him as a strong worker but also relates to the kind of quality work he had to produce.
Three examples of alliteration in line 2 also support this idea of Felix Randal as a strong, vigorous young man. The speaker wants the reader to get an idea not just of the tragedy of Felix Randal's death, but of the way he was once so physically impressive, so vibrantly alive. "Mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome" ring out bold and clear, representing Felix Randal's once-impressive physicality.
Later in the stanza, alliteration is associated with Felix Randal's deteriorating condition, implying that a new kind of strength—the disease's—started to win out over Felix's own: "reason rambled [...] Fatal four disorder, fleshed there."
In the second stanza, the speaker describes how, in his role as priest, he was able to help Felix come to terms with his imminent death. The light, lovely sound of "heavenlier heart," which is what Felix developed through conversation and contact with the speaker, indicates a turn towards sacred and spiritual comfort. The gentle sibilance of "some," "since," and "sweet" in lines 6-7 give the reader a sense of the tenderness with which the speaker treated Felix Randal.
Interestingly, though, the /s/ carries different connotations in line 9 (working with the internal consonance found in the line). Here, there is almost too much of the /s/ sound, conveying a kind of sickliness, with the poem's voice reducing to a sibilant whisper to suggest the physical difficulty Felix Randal faced in his dying days:
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
The rest of the stanza features prominent /t/ alliteration that contributes to an atmosphere of tenderness that is not without its suggestion of physical pain:
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched [...]
Finally, alliteration works in harmony with assonance and consonance in the poem's closing lines to create a vivid image of Felix Randal in his prime—hard at work in his blacksmith's workshop, making and fitting horses shoes for a "great grey drayhorse":
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!
The sounds here conjure the atmosphere of the workshop, which, of course, would have been full of loud noises. But, as mentioned at the start of this analysis, the sounds also work to intensify what's being described. That is, alliteration makes Felix seems more "powerful amidst [his] peers," the horse more "great [and] grey,"—and the "bright and battering" sandal more perfect.
Unlock all 403 words of this analysis of Allusion in “Felix Randal,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
The poem is generally thought to commemorate the death of Felix Spencer, who was one of Hopkins's parishioners in 1880. The name change might have motivated by the rhyme with "sandal" at the end.
“Felix Randal” is a Petrarchan sonnet, made up of 14 lines divided into two main sections—the octet (the first eight lines), and the sestet (the final six). This poem makes further divisions by splitting each section in half, making the poem total up as two quatrains followed by two tercets.
These four stanzas serve relatively distinct purposes. The first four lines consist of two rhetorical questions, which confirm Felix Randal’s death and hint at the speaker’s “duty” during the former’s final months. The second half of the quatrain provides an overview of the time that the two men spent together. This outlines how the young Felix Randal struggled at first to come to terms with his impending death, but that he found spiritual comfort—“a heavenlier heart”—through time spent with the speaker.
Line 9 marks the beginning of the poem’s sestet. Traditionally, this section is known as the volta—the poem’s main shift in direction. Often, the sestet provides a kind of commentary or reframing of what came in the octet. Here, line 9 marks a turn towards a more general discussion of the relationship between the sick and those who care for them. This change in direction isn’t sustained, however; instead, the speaker refocuses on Felix Randal specifically in the final sestet, underscoring the fact his death has moved the speaker deeply.
“Felix Randal” employs Gerard Manley Hopkins’s distinctive approach to meter, which he called “sprung rhythm.” This refers to a metrical approach governed by having the same number of stressed syllables per line alongside a flexible number of unstressed syllables. Usually the first beat in each foot is stressed. Generally speaking, this type of meter is known as accentual as opposed to accentual-syllabic (meaning it places less importance on the overall amount syllables per line than does, for example, iambic pentameter).
This poem usually uses six stressed syllables per line, something called hexameter. The variable amount of unstressed syllables means any two lines in the poem can sound very different from each other, however. Some lines are much longer than others, and some lines also break from this pattern and have more than six stressed beats. All that said, hexameter still marks the overarching meter of the poem.
To see this in action, look at lines 4-6. Some readers may scan a few of the feet here differently, but in general there are six stressed syllables per line with a falling rhythm, moving from stressed to unstressed beats:
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Sonnets usually follow the much stricter meter of iambic pentameter. That the speaker does away with such patterns here reflects his contemplative tone; it is almost as though he is receiving the news of Felix Randal's death, and formulating his response to it, in real time. It makes sense, then, that the meter feels controlled yet fluid, steady yet never rigid.
“Felix Randal” is a Petrarchan sonnet and uses a tight rhyme scheme. The sonnet is split into two main sections—the octet/octave (the first eight lines) and the sestet (the final six). The rhyme scheme in the first section is typical of the Petrarchan form, and runs:
ABBAABBA
The sestet features the slightly more unusual:
CCDCCD
Generally speaking, the robustness and dependability of the rhyme scheme mirror the speaker’s description of the Felix Randal as a once-powerful, physically attractive young man (prior to disease). The line endings ring out loud and clear, though the use of feminine rhymes with unstressed final syllables ensures that the poem isn’t overly bold in tone (e.g., "ended"/"contended").
The most attention-grabbing rhyme of all is that between “Felix Randal” and “sandal.” It’s possible that Hopkins changed the name of the real-life Felix—Felix Spencer—to allow for this particular rhyme. “Sandal” here refers to horseshoes. The speaker clearly admired Felix’s work ethic, and linking his name with his work ends the poem with a kind of final flourish that celebrate's the young man's skill in life.
The speaker of “Felix Randal” is a priest who provided religious comfort and guidance to the young Felix Randal during the latter’s last few months. The poem is at least in part autobiographical; Hopkins, himself a Jesuit priest, played a similar role in the dying days of Felix Spencer, a farrier from the English city of Liverpool.
Though the speaker’s relationship with Felix Randal was an official one on behalf of the church, it’s clear from the speaker’s tone that the two men formed a strong personal bond based on mutual admiration and respect. Over the course of the poem, the speaker makes clear that Felix Randal’s final days and death moved him deeply. In this way, the poem suggests spiritual healing and guidance is a two-way street, with religious leaders and their parishioners learning from and enriching the lives of one another.
One other point worth noting is the way the speaker shifts his grammatical position in relation to Felix Randal. At first, he speaks of Felix Randal in the third person—“he,” “his,” and so on—but by the end he addresses the dead man directly. This supports the idea that the bond between them was strong and personal, not limited to the official duties between priest and parishioner.
“Felix Randal” takes place just after the speaker finds out that the title character has died. He even seems to learn about the death in real-time and then takes the reader along with him as he processes his grief.
After the opening rhetorical question, the poem moves through distinct stages. In the rest of the first stanza, the speaker gives a general overview of the time he spent with Felix Randal. In the second, he is more specific, chronologically tracing the events of Felix Randal’s final months. Through this, the reader learns that the two men spent a significant amount of time together, and that the speaker was there in his official capacity as priest. There is an intimacy to the way the speaker describes this time that suggests that his meetings with Felix Randal were emotionally charged and tender.
For the most part, the poem doesn’t rely on painting a particularly strong sense of place (though colloquial language like “and” and “rest him all road” suggest the north of England). However, this is perhaps how the poem prepares the reader for the ending, which is very much about recreating the atmosphere of a specific location. The speaker closes the poem by depicting Felix Randal in his prime—hard at work in his farrier’s workshop. The sound of the poem's last three lines recreates the noisy acoustics of the workshop, and the intensity of this final image suggests that Felix Randal should be remembered for his life—not his death.
This poem was written in 1880 but not published until 1918, after Gerard Manley Hopkins's death. Though generally grouped in with the Victorian poets based on the time period in which he wrote, Hopkins's poetry was so unusual and original that it's fair to say he was in a category all of his own. Indeed, he hardly published anything during his lifetime, and it was only due to the foresight of his friend and fellow poet, Robert Bridges, that Hopkins's work ever found the light of day. That said, even Bridges found Hopkins's daring use of meter and grammatical dexterity, both of which are on display in "Felix Randal," alienating and hard to understand.
The poem sits somewhere between elegy—a poem that laments someone's death—and a eulogy—a speech or composition that celebrates the life of someone who has recently died. Death, of course, is just about the most popular and enduring subject in poetry, with only love to rival it. The elegiac form has its roots in ancient Greece and Rome, though it did not always directly address death and was also a set of formal/metrical constraints (unlike the modern elegy). Famous poems on the subject of death during Hopkins's era include "In Memoriam A. H. H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and "Remember" by Christina Rosetti. For more contemporary takes on the elegiac form, it's worth taking a look at Denise Riley's "A Part Song" (which examines the grief of a parent who has lost a child) and Emily Berry's "Freud's Beautiful Things."
This poem is also a Petrarchan sonnet, a form widely used by the 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. Most English-language sonnets use strict iambic pentameter, however, which contrasts with the looser and more unpredictable pattern of sprung rhythm that Hopkins regularly turned to in his work.
Finally, while "Felix Randal" is sure-footed in its belief that the Christian faith can provide comfort to the dying, readers should compare the group of later poems by Hopkins known as the "terrible sonnets" for the way in which they express a more doubtful and anxious relationship to religion.
There is evidence to suggest that "Felix Randal" draws from Gerard Manley Hopkins's own life. Hopkins was not really a poet in his lifetime—in the sense of publishing his work—but a priest. He belonged to a religious order known as the Society of Jesus, itself a branch of Roman Catholicism. Members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, follow the teachings of Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish priest and theologian in the 16th century. Jesuits follow a strict code of self-denial and place emphasis on a process known as contemplation, in which an individual learns to appreciate God's presence in all things.
The idea that the world expresses God's will and creativity directly is known as immanence, and is explored in some of Hopkins's most famous poems (e.g., "Pied Beauty" and "God's Grandeur"). "Felix Randal" makes specific reference to a Catholic ritual known as the Last Rites, in which a priest helps a sick or aged individual prepare for death. The second stage of this ritual is mentioned in line 6—the Anointment of the Sick with holy oil, which is placed on the sick person's forehead and hands.
The poem is at least in part inspired by Felix Spencer, a farrier whom Hopkins knew while stationed at the St. Xavier church in Liverpool, a large city in the north of England. The poem was written in 1880, shortly after the death of Felix Spencer from pulmonary tuberculosis. As with the speaker in the poem, Hopkins was tasked with administering the Last Rites to his parishioner.
The Poet's Life and Work — A valuable resource on Hopkins from the Poetry Foundation.
The Jesuits in Context — An informative lecture about what distinguishes the Jesuits from other branches of Catholicism.
"Felix Randal" Explored — An interesting article on the poem from the newspaper The Guardian.
A Sprung Rhythm Explainer — A short discussion of Hopkins's metrical innovations.
Behind the Scenes With a Farrier — Watch what a day in the life of a farrier looks like.