selected by Frederick Buechner in "Speak What We Feel" (2001) Reflections on Literature & Faith
. . . one of the four essayists/poets that he compares and contrasts is
Hopkins citing this work on "Darkness"
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.
What 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 heartbroken. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste; my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Self-yeast 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.
[page 20, from part I]
ISBN= 00621752X HarperCollins
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