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Self questioning
As with several of Hopkins’ later, darker sonnets, the meaning is not difficult. It is more the intensity of feeling that is difficult to handle, especially after the comparatively joyful nature poems written earlier in his career. He addresses his heart, which, for Hopkins, seems not only the seat of the emotions, but also a sort of conscience. Thus, he uses ‘we’ (see Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves), where the heart, too, is addressed (or apostrophised). In the waking hours of the night, he and his heart have gone along unspecified paths of thought and fantasies.
Symbolic darkness
The night darkness is symbolic of Hopkins’ emotional and spiritual state, as is the delay of morning light: there is no escape from the dark via the light associated with from God.
Hopkins’ complaint comes in the second quatrain:
- his cries, or laments, are like undeliverable letters
- it is as if God (‘dearest him’) has gone away and not left a forwarding address
- he may be echoing the lament voiced in Lamentations 3:2; Lamentations 3:6; Lamentations 3:8
- there is no way of getting in touch with God whilst he is away.
Man without God
Absence is God's ‘deep decree’, and it tastes bitter to Hopkins. In fact, what tastes bitter is himself, his still unredeemed self, under ‘the curse’. This word echoes Genesis 3:17, where God says to a disobedient Adam:
‘cursed is the ground for thy sake’.
In general Christian teaching, the term ‘cursed’ is used widely of the fallen nature of humans (and in the New Testament ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13) is mentioned).
Hopkins sees the experience of being full of the bitterness of the inner self as being similar to the eventual permanent experience which will befall ‘the lost’:
- The term ‘the lost’ is used in the Bible of all non-believers, as in:
or
- In the poem, the lost are worse off than people of faith, since there is no chance of heaven for them.
- Pick out words that Hopkins uses of ‘the lost’.
- Does his own dark experience seem to make him more sympathetic to them?
- Does Hopkins seem to you to have lost his faith?
- Today's New International Version
- 2He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light;
- King James Version
- 2He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
- Today's New International Version
- 6He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
- King James Version
- 6He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
- Today's New International Version
- 8Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.
- King James Version
- 8Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
- Today's New International Version
- 17To Adam he said, 'Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' 'Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
- King James Version
- 17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
- Today's New International Version
- 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.'
- King James Version
- 13Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
- Today's New International Version
- 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.'
- King James Version
- 10For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
- Today's New International Version
- 3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
- King James Version
- 3But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With 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 heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast 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.
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