The genius of Gerard Manley Hopkins went unrecognised during his lifetime. Here, on the weekend of the 125th anniversary of his death, a fellow Jesuit celebrates his mastery of language and vivid imagination All in all, it’s a strange story. In 1930 Gerard Manley Hopkins was hardly known as a poet, yet just eight years later, the English Catholic sculptor Eric Gill chose to use a Hopkins poem in creating the Lord Cecil Memorial, a massive bas-relief in the Palais des Nations in Geneva. A gift from the United Kingdom to the League of Nations, it hangs on the wall above the entrance to the council chamber, and portrays the reclining figure of Adam with modernist simplicity. Around this figure, Gill carved in square letters five lines taken from Hopkins’ ode The Wreck of the Deu