Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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.
How do you read the accents? I understand "bruised" as "bruisEd", but I can't figure out "cheer".
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely lovely poem. I read it three times to make sure I didn't miss anything.
The trick with Hopkins is to NOT read his poetry in the usual manner of a formal structured rhythm, but to read it as if it were normal speech. Hopkins called this "sprung rhythm", and he only added the stresses where he thought the reader might be confused by falling back on a traditional meter. If you simply read the poem out loud, as if you were speaking it in a normal conversation, you won't need to refer to the accents. The intent, as I understand it, was to return poetry back to its gritty roots. Don't automatically pause at the end of a line, and don't count the number of syllables, but follow the natural flow of stresses from your everyday speech. You will find a stress on the first syllable, of course, and then the rest is "free", so to speak, depending on the context. Again, read it out loud, and then it will "click", and you will be hooked for life.
DeleteGot it. Thank you.
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