Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
After entering into the Catholic priesthood in 1867, Hopkins burnt all of his poetry. He didn't start writing again until 1875. (Source)
Hopkins was an early environmentalist. He wrote against what the pollution and development of the Industrial Revolution was doing to the natural world. (Source)
Hopkins abandoned poetry when he entered the priesthood. Years later, the sinking of a passenger ship called The Deutschland, in which five nuns drowned, in part inspired Hopkins to return to writing poems. (Source)