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Religion represents the major correlation and contrast between the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Gerald Hopkins. Hardy's poems looked at religion with a cynical eye, exposing inconsistencies of the actions of the world as proof of either the ambivalence or lack of a God. Hopkins, on the other hand, saw God as an omnipresent force on the planet and in everyone's lives, and his poetry reflects this extreme faith in religion. The poems of both Hopkins and Hardy mirror occurrences in each of their lives, as both led substantially different ones. Despite some similarities between the poets -- significant unhappiness, same era -- the differences in their views on religion and their subsequent effects on their poetry are notable and important. Hardy, surprisingly enough, was raised in a Christian family and held strong faith in Christianity for the first part of his life. As he aged, however, Hardy began to wonder about the inconsistencies of life. If there really was a God, he asked himself, then why would there be such horrors in society and nature? Why would there be so much suffering in the world? These questions were being asked at around the time that Charles Darwin was revolutionizing the scientific community with his research on creationism. The ideas of natural selection and evolution coupled with the seeming randomness of life led Hardy to believe that God was either uncaring and unresponsible or simply did not exist. Hardy never was exactly sure about the existence of God, but he was often unable to marry his scientific principles to the ideals of religion, and thus found himself remaining agnostic. The poem "Hap" demonstrates many of these issues that Hardy was facing. The first word of the poem, "If," depicts the uncertainty of Hardy's faith in both God and his own idea about what/who God is. "If but some vengeful god would call to me / From up the sky, and laugh: 'Though suffering thing, / Know that they sorrow is my ecstasy / That they love's loss is my hate's profiting!," (Norton, 69) the poem reads, and we see that although Hardy is uncertain about the existence of God, he has some ideas about the ambivalence that God has if he exists. Hopkins, contrastingly, would not have started "Hap" with the word "If." Hopkins had a strong devotion to Catholicism, and eventually became ordained as a priest.
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