He begins writing a sonnet in a radically new form, a form consisting of eight stresses per line rather than the customary five, with a caesura or pause midway through each line.

Mid-November 1884, and the bleakness of winter coming on as he peers through the window in his small bedroom at 85-6 St Stephen’s Green. Fr Hopkins, 40 now, has been in Dublin since February, assigned here following an invitation from Fr Delaney of the Irish Province of the Jesuits. His duties consist of grading a multitude of entrance exams in Greek and Latin for the Irish universities, most of the students middle-class or lower, and Catholic. He keeps meticulous markers – a point, half a point – to see who can be accepted and who will be turned away. He also keeps meticulous notes on Roman history and literature – Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus and Livy especially – for his lectures, most of his classes consisting of six or eight students.

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