The Hopkins Sequence

The Lingering Out These years all flashed and spent, world without event, while without recompense!

What shape of man is he whose missteps wreck so, trick his stable strides, Whose every sally’s sullied by failure, fully the slender ones swords in sides.

As now a last poem bleeds from my poor pen, inkleaking, in trickling tides.

Contagion!: I fail once more, I am prey of a (pray for me) base pestilence, Typhus, borne that way we know, sewer-surgèd foam, on a foam it rides: Disease, a deggèd doggèd thing, a thievery, a keeper also; it abides.

I succumb to it. Ah, here is a grace perhaps, here is a lovely providence.

This being sick, it assuages the mind, it rests the spirit its futile exploits.

Father, brother that is, light the beeswax, tender me extreme anoints, Untie me at last, for there are, have been alway, heavy irons binding me.

I am happy, so happy! Me, no one, wayward one, me He appoints