Selected Sonnets and Other Lyrics by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Edgar had indeed felt himself to be ‘at the worst’ at the beginning of this scene, but then encounters his father, Gloucester, blinded and thrown out of his own house by the play’s villains. He then takes Gloucester to Dover, where his father attempts suicide unsuccessfully by throwing himself off a cliff. All of these elements are recalled in Hopkins’ sonnet.

The first phrase, ‘No worst there is none,’ could either be one of those agonised conversational hyperboles meaning ‘nothing could be worse than this,’ but more likely, given the connection with Shakespeare’s play it means that one cannot call an experience the worst when, always, worse experiences succeed. This evokes an endless and intensifying experience of suffering, implied by the idea of ‘pangs’ being amplified by being ‘schooled at forepangs:’ once a particular form of agony is established, its return is even worse. The controlling sense in these lines is of grief’s musical ‘pitch’ being raised further and further up the scale as a string is tightened and tightened by tuning; however, there is also a brutal sense of violence communicated by the words ‘Pitched’ (as in ‘thrown down’) and ‘wring.’

With no comfort either from the Holy Spirit or from Mary, Hopkins’ cries ‘huddle’ together like herd animals and become identified with the lamentation of all humanity – a ‘chief-/woe, world-sorrow’ – which is probably to be identified with the primordial Fall of mankind, given that this is such a prominent theme in these poems. Of particular interest is the next phrase, ‘on an age-old anvil wince and sing.’ Hopkins’ cries are, metaphorically, being beaten out on an anvil of sorrow – ‘age-old’ again implies the endless pangs of humanity from the Fall until now – and struck by the hammer blows of adverse circumstances (or even by God Himself?) they ‘wince’ in pain and ‘sing’ out their lamentation. That these cries are cries of anger and resentment is made clear by the next lines. Hopkins is, apparently, taken hold of by a personified ‘Fury’ who encourages him to be fierce and angry (‘fell’), to rebel against the hammer blows, particularly as human life is so ‘brief.’ Such cries of anger against injustice; such resentment against divine powers for providing no comfort, are found throughout the text of King Lear .