Monday, April 12, 2010

wring-world right foot rock

I think I learned about pathetic fallacy too young; now I can never be entirely sure if I'm depressed and gloomy because of the weather, or if the weather is depressed and gloomy because of me. Not that I think I'm a tragic hero (really not), but I never quite feel like I can blame my bad mood on the weather, either. What if it is my fault?

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.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), "Carrion Comfort", 1885, and titled by the editor of the 1918 edition of Hopkins: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918).

God. How so good, GMH?

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