Vox Populi
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Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
Public Domain. Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature. Only after his death did a few of Hopkins’s poems appear in anthologies where they were recognized for their innovative use of imagery and rhythm. By 1930 Hopkins’s work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century.
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That first line alone!
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I love GMH’s poems read out loud.
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Thanks for featuring a less known poem of this singular genius, not only in his rhythms and language, but in singing the sorrow songs of the soul. This one strikes such resonant chords today, this season. Thanks.
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Thanks, Kathleen. I discovered the pleasures of GMH’s poems when I was in college. The music of the poems has always moved me.
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This poem would be great for a class to study for the intricacies of his prosody and the slants of meaning. I’d forgotten how he sometimes combined words as within the phrase Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours… while in another poem he wrote: Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise/You Few can write well like that. But sometimes he could
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GMH was a great innovator in his rhythm and diction.
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How did he know? And we haven’t even met.
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I would not have survived a singularly difficult year of my life without the words of this glorious poet. Was not familiar with this particular poem, though … brilliant and unforgettable. I used to be able to memorize his poems quite readily, and might want to tackle learning this one by heart. Thank you!
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Thank you, Cherry Blossom.
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