This the last of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “terrible sonnets” (terrible in the sense that they seem to describe deep depression):
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
'S not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
This poem begins with a clear problem–the narrator feels tormented–and a solution: he should be kinder to himself. This outcome is expressed as a wish (“Let me live. …:”), not as an explicit direction or decision. We might call the first stanza a “forgiveness meditation.” The syntax is straightforward and the words are familiar. The lines represent grammatical units and conclude with monosyllabic words that neatly rhyme, ABBA.
In contrast, the second stanza is an elaborate simile with challenging syntax, where adjectives function as nouns and nouns turn into verbs. The narrator gropes around his “comfortless.” He fails to find comfort there, just as blind eyes cannot “day.” He also resembles a thirsty person who finds no relief (“thirst’s all-in-all”) even though everything is wet. Perhaps he is alone at sea where there is ne’er a drop to drink.
These are tropes for being unable to obey one’s commands to oneself. If you are blind, you cannot order yourself to see light. If you are in Hopkins’ condition, your “sad self” will not comply with your entreaty to be “hereafter kind” to yourself. A person cannot decide to “day.”
In the third stanza, the narrator tries to grab his own attention, calling to his soul, then to his self, and then to his “poor Jackself,” where “Jack” means a regular guy, a common man. (You could get a stranger’s attention with, “Hey, Jack!). “Lét be” bears a stress mark, which is common in Hopkins; here it represents an interrupting cry.
The poem has moved from a hortatory subjunctive (“let me more pity”) to an insistent imperative. The neat line breaks of the first stanza have broken down as most lines are now enjambed. (This trend continues to the point that a later line begins with an apostrophe-S.)
The strategy has changed, too. At the start, the narrator had wished that his self would be kinder to itself. Taken as an instruction, this failed, just as you can’t tell a blind person to try harder to see. Now the narrator “advises” not trying to change. “Call off thoughts awhile,” and maybe comfort will begin to grow like a root left alone with room. (Also, a root-room sounds like a place of comfort, a quiet cellar in which to borrow.)
The final stanza begins, “At God knows when to God knows what.” This sounds like an idiom for ignorance–“God knows what” can mean “I have no idea.” I think the phrase is meant to land like that, representing the mental state of a despondent person. But we gradually realize that Hopkins is serious about God. The divine smile is not “wrung.” We can’t squeeze grace out of damp material after a rain. Instead, it just breaks out as sunshine between mountains, dappled like a cow.
Here the grammatical mood is indicative. In the phrase, “skies betweenpie mountains,” “betweenpie” is a verb of Hopkins’ invention. The subject of this verb is “the skies,” but behind them is the divine subject that makes them look pied, or dappled, or stippled.
The mile ahead is lovely, not because we have made ourselves happy but by sheer grace.
See also: for Gerard Manley Hopkins; Notes on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Spring and Fall; gratitude and the sublime; Pied Beauty, illustrated; tangled beauty; when you know, but cannot feel, beauty