Peace

Hopkins wrote “Peace” on October 2, 1879, as he was preparing to leave his role as a curate in Oxford for Bedford Leigh, a town known for its uncleanliness. He expressed anxiety (a lack of peace) in anticipation of this move. Not only was Hopkins apprehensive about this next step in his theological journey and moving to a new city, but Great Britain was also roiling with turmoil as well. When the poem was written in 1879, an expanding Great Britain was at war on three different fronts: in Africa, in Afghanistan, and in Ireland The Anglo-Zulu War was initiated when the Zulu kingdom resisted Britain’s attempts to create a South African federation, among other contentious points including diamond mining. The Second Anglo-Afghan War (out of the three total confrontations) ran from 1878 through 1880, as Britain attempted to nullify Russian influence in the country and tried to exert its own control over the nation. In Ireland, the Irish Land War led to unrest that lasted from 1879 through 1882. The Land War was one Irish history’s largest and most brutal conflicts, and was the first time that landlord authority to control land was challenged.