Hopkins

One great poem by famous English Catholic [and Reverend Father] Gerard Manley Hopkins [1844-1889] is "I wake...", it has both a simple lyrical line and a truly creepy underpinning all stuck together. It's quite effective and moving, very accessible. Read more by him here.

What's so neat about this piece is really the fact that it captures something very personal, that feeling you have when you wake up and there is no sun, it's totally dark out. It feels hushed, confused, and strange. Almost like you're 'out of time', somehow transported to another world of mist and darkness.

Here it is:

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.
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.