"No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
 More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
 Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
 Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
 My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
 Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing -
 Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
 -ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.

 O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
 Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
 May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
 Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
 Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
 Life death does end and each day dies with sleep."

Easily one of the darkest poems in the English language, and one of the most glorious to read aloud. I’ve always admired Hopkins for the way his poems almost always have drive - they flow like white water, pouring relentlessly forward with unimaginable force, dashing angrily through outthrust rocks of words so that the overall effect is of a sort of muscular grandness that I can only compare with Blake.

And of all these incredible, unforgettable poems, this one is my favourite. I love the way Hopkins creates an unrelenting landscape of desolation, a twisted badlands of igneous pain that one cannot just run through, but that must be crawled through on hands and knees so that years after I first read this poem, some line or the other will pop into my head and I will experience an authentic sense of wretchedness, even when I have absolutely nothing to be wretched about. And, ironically enough, that’s precisely what makes this poem so precious.

— Aseem

Minstrels Links

Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Poem #3, Inversnaid
Poem #35, The Windhover
Poem #59, To a Young Child
Poem #134, Pied Beauty
Poem #260, Moonrise
Poem #606, God’s Grandeur

William Blake:
Poem #26, Jerusalem
Poem #66, The Tyger
Poem #97, The Fly
Poem #368, Auguries of Innocence
Poem #546, The Sick Rose
Poem #771, The Divine Image