Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark
1I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day ,
2 What hours, O what black hours we have spent
3 This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
4And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
5With witness I speak this. But where I say
6 Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
7 Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
8To dearest him that lives alas! away.
9I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
10Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
11 Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
12Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
13 The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
14As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Later Poetic Manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Facsimile, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991): 271. PR 4803 H44A6 1991 Robarts Library
First publication date:
1918
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1996-2000.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/14
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbaccdccd
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