Gerard Manly Hopkins-I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day/Felix Randal

Gerard Hopkins poetry did not become celebrated until after his death. his work did not become published until World War I(). A lot of his poetry connected nature with God. Hopkins work as a priest took him to the slums of Liverpool; "He suffered physically and spiritually from the "vice and horror" he found in his dreary urban duties: "It made even life a burden to me""(p.773). Hopkins was known to be a great teacher and priest, however, he was not cut out for his duties. He was often sickly and depressed (). His later works, written in Ireland reflect a sense of spiritual struggle (p.774) and doom. Although he was a man of the cloth he battled with his quest for God and his work.  In the poem, I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day reveals Hopkins struggle with his spiritual self. In the first four lines of I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Hopkins presents a depressing tone. He wakens to a depressive state and even in the light hours, his state continues; "What hours, o what black hours/And more in must, in yet longer light's delay"(Lines 1-4). In lines nine through fourteen, he relates the physical state of the depression and its emotional effects. These lines connect the human self with the spiritual self and his discord in the spiritual struggle; "I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree/Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;. In these few lines, Hopkins' discord is with himself, attributing his depressive state to something he has created. in the following lines he blames his physical self as well as his spiritual; "Selfyeast of a spirit a dull dough sours. I see"(Line 12). "Selfyeast" implies that as the sour dough grows within him it spreads. It takes on the tone of a disease. In the last two lines of the poem seem to represent his missionary work that depressed him a great deal and added to his depressive state; "The lost are like this, and their scourge to be/As I am mine, their sweating selves but worse" (Lines 13-14).

I found this poem rather interesting. For a man of the "cloth" he seemed to be severely depressed about his role. When i think of a priest or pastor, I feel like they are in tune with God and that their quest for saving lives is their main focus in life. I think of a selfless person who puts the work of God before anything else. Hopkins does not display this in his works written while in Ireland. The tone of the poem not only spoke about depression, rather it posed the question "why?" For someone who found God's work in nature and wrote about it, he had very little to say about God's creation of humans. This includes himself as well. At first, I thought the poem was a "cry" for help. However, he doesn't seem like he wants to save himself. It almost feels as if he has "given up" on his spiritual self. What I thought about is how "human" the poem became after the first three lines. He doesn't present himself as a man of God, but rather, just a man who is questioning God.