Carrion Comfort
Carrion Comfort
Original Text
The Later Poetic Manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Facsimile, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991): 281, 283. PR 4803 H44A6 1991 Robarts Library
1Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
2 Not untwist -- slack they may be -- these last strands of man
3 In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
4Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
5But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
6 Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
7 With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
8O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoíd thee and flee?
9Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
10 Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
11Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
12 Cheer whóm though? The héro whose héaven-handling flúng me, fóot tród
13Me? or mé that fóught him? O whích one? is it eách one? That níght, that yéar
14 Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
Publication Start Year
1918
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1996-2000.
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