As was said, I'm writing a book at the moment called Lands of Likeness,

which is a kind of implication of contemplation in its older and newer forms.

And the chapter, which I'm going to read a bit from today, is actually got four parts.

The first part I talk about the classical, patristic and medieval background to contemplation,

of which I'll say just a word or two, because this is a classical school.

Do you know it all, right?

The second part is on the Winhover, which I'll read today.

I'll read the poem and I'll talk about the poem.

The third part which I won't read is on what I call the hermeneutics of contemplation,

which is something likely to get me lynched because I'm seeking to replace the hermeneutics of suspicion with the great heroes of the American Academy, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud,

with a new triumvirate of college Schopenhauer and Hussle on contemplation.

And then the final part is on what happens to this tradition of contemplation in poetry after Hopkins,

specifically with regard to birds.

And that's to do with some more modern poems and nature writing.

And my thesis there, just so you know it, is that we lapse from contemplation proper

into a state of fascination.

We move from that which is free to that which is constrained.

But that's a whole thesis that I'm happy to talk about in question time, if you wish,

but I'm not going to be talking about in the bulk of what I talked about today.

Let me just say one or two words about the first part of the talk,

which I won't be reading in any detail.

Contemplation as we inherit in the Latin West, of course, comes from the Latin word,

...