Sunday, October 19, 2014

WAKING  UP

Poem for Today - Sunday - October 19, 2014

I  WAKE AND FEEL 
THE FELL OF DARK 

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.


© Gerard Manley Hopkins,
In Hopkins, The Mystic Poets,
Preface by Rev. Thomas Ryan,

Page 58

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