I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark

1I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day ,
2 What hours, O what black hours we have spent
3 This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
4And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
5With witness I speak this. But where I say
6 Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
7 Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
8To dearest him that lives alas! away.

9I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
10Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
11 Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
12Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
13 The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
14As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
________________________________________
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbaccdccd