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 (1844-1889)
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