Despair - A False Comfort of Ceasing to Struggle! Or, Is Grieving a Healing?

G.M. Hopkins' Carrion Comfort is a sonnet on devastation and the dark nighttime of his soul. Here, as the statute title indicates, Despair is a comfort, yet it is also carrion, a putrefying corpse.

In the first quatrain, the poet is determined not to abandon himself to Despair that would kill him. Instead, he would transport on his wrestle with God. He declines to shout "I can no more" and bidding up his volition to trust and to wish for daybreak. He

"Can something, hope, wishing twenty-four hours come, not take not to be".

In the 2nd quatrain, the poet computer addresses the "terrible" one, who is either personified Despair, or God, who have sent the Despair. The poet is described as being on the ground, roughly rocked by the powerful "wring-world correct foot" of Christ, pictured as a king of beasts with dark devouring eyes. Mark Hopkins adverts his tormentor's breath which, like a tempest, have buffeted him in his despairing effort to flee.

In the six the wind from which the poet was fleeing goes the wind that offprints the husk from the grain which is to be preserved. This proposes that the fearfulness and desperation he have got experienced have been sent by Supreme Being for his purification. Mark Hopkins asseverates that since he have accepted his battle and torment by kissing "the rod" of God, his bosom have also lapped strength and purloined joyousness from his faith, and would at modern times laughter and rejoice.

In the concluding three the poet is bewildered as to what haps when Jesus or Supreme Being used his Godhead strength against him. He ruefully inquires who is cheered: Supreme Being the hero, the great wrestler, or Mark Hopkins that fought God? Was it one or both? The inquiry stays unanswered.

(The inquiry it raises in the heads of readers is, then to whom should his bosom adhere: to Jesus or himself in his battles to defeat an wicked (Despair) sent by Christ? Despair offerings the false comfortableness of ceasing to struggle, to ease oneself by abandoning duty towards the self. Perhaps it is this 1 obstruction that problems all the searchers of Truth – in not holding oneself solely responsible for the ailments 1 confronts in life, but instead, seeking safety in blame, in making others responsible, or even Supreme Being Himself).

The poet shouts "my God!" as he is overwhelmed with the extraordinary wonderment and enigma of his Godhead opponent.

In exploring his manner to Supreme Being during some time period of darkness and torment, he goes aware of the hurting as a procedure of catharsis and advancement toward God. Evil should be accepted as measurement of 1s trial, as also of strength, and only in the overcoming or otherwise, of that wicked through struggle, make we measure up as masters to come in into the kingdom of divinity. And, since it is sent by Supreme Being Himself, the devil, as it were, is not opposed to the volition of God. Rather, it is a complimentary powerfulness in contradiction.

Carrion Comfort is singular in its usage of the Sprung Rhythm, which is a meter based on the numeration of emphasizes (stress rhythm) instead of the numeration of syllables (running rhythm). Each line of the verse form incorporates six beats, with plentiful initial rhyme and chemical compound words.