Themes in The Starlight Night

Faith and beauty

The main theme to emerge is that earthly beauty and religious faith are reconcilable (similar to a later sonnet, ‘To what Serves Mortal Beauty?'):

• if nature is God's book, then a wonderful starry night, where fathomless space and piercing light awe the beholder, reflects the ecstatic aspect of religious belief.
• yet the actual practice of religious faith can seem very ordinary after such an intense experience of beauty
• the exact relationship of the two needs to be established.

Hopkins wrote several poems wrestling with this (the most famous being The Windhover):

• his efforts to persuade himself that there is a simple reconciliation are shown in repetitions like ‘Look, look'
• is he addressing himself as much as the reader?
• the reconciliation is expressed in somewhat Catholic terms ‘Christ and his mother and all his hallows' (‘hallows' meaning ‘saints') - as if he is forcing himself to make an orthodox statement.

(Look also at the themes of The beauty, variety and uniqueness of Nature, and of Serving God in the Themes and significant ideas).