When you see this, post a poem

[flamingsword]

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.


TW for grief

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I so love Hopkins.

[flamingsword]

This is the first of his works I have come across, and it is very good. Raw feeling but verbally polished.

[minoanmiss]

I think he quite consciously reached back to English before the majority of Romance language influence, which gives a very different rhythm and that raw feeling.

My favoroite poem of his is Pied Beauty. I will try to find the post where I illustrated it with a naked woman because why not.