I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark

1885

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.What hours, O what black hoürs we have spentThis 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 sayHours I mean years, mean life. And my lamentIs cries countless, cries like dead letters sentTo dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decreeBitter 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 seeThe lost are like this, and their scourge to beAs I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

From Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918), via the English Wikisource transcription.

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.