[870] No worst, there is none

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul, <dattadayadhvamdamyata@>:

"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."

	-- Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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