POETRY IN LOCKDOWN: 11

My third choice from poems about grief is by Gerard Manley Hopkins. A Jesuit priest in the 19^th century, who had an unmistakeable but, of course, never acknowledged gay nature, had few outlets for his emotions. Hopkins found just two: prayer and poetry. Much of his poetry takes the form of prayers, but his writing was also a field of remarkable verse experimentation, that was unlike anything written in English before.

Felix Randall was a blacksmith in Liverpool, where Hopkins worked as a priest. He had tuberculosis and died in his early thirties. Father Hopkins had given him the last rites, and said his Requiem Mass. You will find in this poem much more feeling than you might expect in a priest writing about a parishioner.

Felix Randal
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!