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Home  »  44. ‘To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life’

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

44. ‘To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life’

TO seem the stranger lies my lot, my life

Among strangers. Father and mother dear,

Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near

And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.

England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife

To my creating thought, would neither hear

Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-

y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd

Remove. Not but in all removes I can

Kind love both give and get. Only what word

Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban

Bars or hell’s spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,

Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.