Selected Sonnets and Other Lyrics by Gerard Manley Hopkins

‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’

GLOSSARY
‘fell’ – as a noun the word means the hairy skin of an animal (or, possibly, a blow). But the word also has the adjectival force of ‘fierce, terrible,’ and the verbal force of ‘fall’ (‘the dark which fell’).

‘dead letters’ – undelivered letters.

‘gall’ – a bitter substance.

THOUGHTS
The first in this selection of the ‘Irish sonnets of desolation’ or the ‘terrible sonnets.’ This may well be the poem Hopkins referred to as being ‘written in blood.’

For all its emotional torment, it is a beautifully crafted poem. The first stressed syllable, ‘wake,’ is echoed by ‘day’ at the end of the line. Both ‘feel’ and ‘fell,’ ‘dark’ and ‘day’ are close in sound texture, and this artistry continues through a poem that seems, paradoxically, to be so natural and direct in its meaning. The yearning that is communicated by the later phrase ‘in yet longer light’s delay’ seems to be the consequence of a simple enough alliterative sequence, and yet closer study reveals a strong trochaic rhythm in ‘ long er light’s de lay .’ Each alliterating syllable also introduces a different long vowel, and all these things combine to produce the ‘sigh’ of the phrase. Balanced against this technical mastery, however, is a daring use of colloquialism. Consider the repeat of ‘hours’ in line two, where the second is disyllabic (‘hoürs’) as it would be said with conversational emphasis. Or the informal hyperboles of ‘But where I say/ Hours I mean years, mean life’ which sound just the sort of irrationality that the mind falls into when depressed, but speaking in an open, conversational manner.