Hopkins may be referring to one of the Furies of Greek mythology when he writes: ‘Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-/ ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.’ The Furies were the  punishments like famines upon humanity. Their ‘justice’ was swift (‘No lingering’) and brutal (‘fell: force’). However, he may simply be personifying the emotion of ‘fury’, which is similarly swift and brutal.


In the sestet, Hopkins tries to describe the nature of his particular torment, using alliteration to create consonant chime: ‘O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/ Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.’ He claims his mind has mountains, or obstacles, so steep that no man could overcome them. It is natural to wonder what these insurmountable obstacles were. Some biographers suggest that Hopkins felt guilty about the love he felt for Digby Dolben when he was a young man (Dolben died in a drowning accident when he was 19). There was also his severance from his family, his physical ailments and his miserable living conditions. The way he writes suggests these ‘sheer cliffs’ were those things that he could never reveal to anyone, and this must have been extremely lonely and isolating. To ‘fathom’ something is to understand it, so when Hopkins says these mountains and cliffs are ‘no- man-fathomed’ he means that no one could understand his deepest secrets. This may well be a reference to his latent homosexuality or his doubts about his vocation. The next line is reminiscent of Romeo’s aphorism (observation) ‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound’: ‘Hold them cheap/ May who ne’er hung there.’ Only those who have never experienced  depression would empathise with Hopkins’ suffering.


Hopkins makes the point that we do not have unlimited capacity for enduring pain: ‘Nor does long our small/ Durance deal with that steep or deep.’ He uses the adjective ‘small’ to suggest that we are ill-equipped to suffer in the way he is suffering. There is no happy ending to this haunting sonnet. The only comfort Hopkins can offer is scant indeed; that death will eventually put him out of his misery: ‘Here! creep,/ Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all/ Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.’ words are bleak, particularly if we interpret ‘day’ as a symbol of hope.


234 VERSE 2025


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