Gerard Manley Hopkins

No Worst, There is None

This is an incredibly dark sonnet written by Hopkins. I felt the pain coming from every line that he wrote, almost as if he struggled to think clearly enough to write it. From the first stanza I felt his believed abandonment by his deep devotion and God: “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring./Comforter, where, where is your comforting?/Mary, mother of us where is your relief.”  Hopkins was so devoted to his religion and at the same time was so hurt by it. He confessed he was pained by what he saw and experienced “It made life even a burden to me” (pg. 773). He also wrote this as he as living in Ireland, a move that caused him to feel even more alone, and isolated. Reading this example of his “terrible sonnet” I feel great pity for this man. It takes a special person to enter into the priesthood, a calling. I would have thought in order for him to achieve this great task he would have been truly happy to be in the vocation, but he obviously had more demons in him than he could fight.