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

70. To his Watch

MORTAL my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart

Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I

Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie

The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?

The telling time our task is; time’s some part,

Not all, but we were framed to fail and die—

One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby

Is comfort’s carol of all or woe’s worst smart.

Field-flown, the departed day no morning brings

Saying ‘This was yours’ with her, but new one, worse,

And then that last and shortest…