Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins Essay -- Carrion Comfort Hopk

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins was a talented poet, and he was besides extremely devoted to his faith. He used his poetry as an highroad in which to express his love and praise to his Creator, and creationy of his poems are elegant hymns of adoration. Carrion Comfort, however, is one of his terrible sonnets. Hopkins non only wrote about the beautiful fall in of faith, but also the questioning and suffering that inevitably comes during a somebodys spiritual journey. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet was one of Hopkinss favorite forms of poetry and one that he employed frequently in his writing. Hopkins enjoyed the fusion of form and cloy, and the structure of an Italian sonnet perfectly lends itself to such a synthesis. An Italian sonnet is divided into two parts, the octave and the sestet. The number one eight lines have an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme and the sestet concludes with CDCDCD. The content of an Italian sonnet is very specifically a nd thematically organized as is the content of Hopkinss Carrion Comfort. The octave is divided into two quatrains, which present and then develop, respectively, a problem or situation on which the poem focuses. The sestet relates the resolve or solution to the problem. The transition between the two sections of the poem bay window be easily identified through dramatic punctuation, or a distinct change in tone. The octave in Carrion Comfort powerfully illustrates intense suffering and despair experienced by the speaker. Hopkins masterfully depicts the variety from the utter despair caused by this suffering to hope and reconciliation with divinity as he makes a transition into the sestet. Throughout the poem, Hopkins uses various poetical elements, such as th... ...feast on theeNot untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of manIn me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I canCan something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.But ah, but O thou terrible, why woul dst thou naive on meThy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? gazeWith darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,O in turns of tempest, me heaped there me emotional to avoid thee and flee?Why? That my chaff might fly my scintilla lie, sheer and clear.Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,Hand rather, my heart lo lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trodMe? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that yearOf now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God) my God.