Carrion Comfort

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of manIn 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 meThy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scanWith 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 tródMe? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that yearOf now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is one of English poetry’s most brilliant stylistic innovators, and one of the most distinguished poets of any age. However, during his lifetime he was known not as a poet but as a Jesuit priest, and his faith was essential to his work. His writings combine an intense feeling for nature with an ecstatic awareness of its divine origins, most remarkably expressed in his magnificent and highly original ‘sprung rhythm.

Oxford
England

This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking.

"Catherine Phillips's excellent edition of the poems...will be the standard reading text for many years to come."
Times Literary Supplement

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