I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day"

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.

...O if we but knew what to do
When we delve or hew — Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,

I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, — sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar’s gardens blow, — And a quince in hand, — not one
Is set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, ‘cause world is wintering....