My own heart let me more have pity on

My own heart
Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

I came across this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem a week or so ago, and immediately the first line went straight into me. "My own heart let me more have pity on." It's a variation of what I try to tell myself and what I sometimes tell others, "Be kind to yourself." My sister tells me, "Be a friend to yourself." Would you treat a friend this way? If not, don't treat yourself that way either.

So, yes, I do enjoy analyzing poetry. First, the title. I don't think Hopkins gave some of his poems titles. I found this online under that complete first clause, "My own heart let me more have pity on." In a book I have of Hopkins' poems, it is simply called "My own heart." The online site and the book also had different line spacings from each other. But just now I counted the lines; there are 14; this is a sonnet. So I pushed all the lines together. Then I looked at the rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA CDC CDC. I searched around (because I don't remember everything I learned in college) and found a source that said this is a Petrarchan sonnet, named for the Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch, who either invented or popularized the form. Shakespeare's sonnets (in a form known, logically enough, as Shakespearean) have a different rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. You can see how that would give you different ways of grouping your thoughts. All this about the sonnet form, I just was looking at this morning. In visiting the poem over the last week or so, I was more concerned with unpacking the meaning—the literal meaning—so that I could let the poem sink in. (Archibald MacLeish said, "A poem should not mean/ But be." But I need it to mean before it can be, at least in my heart.)

I printed the poem out at work and folded the paper so it stood around on my desk like an open greeting card. The first two clauses are simple enough. In my mind, I put them into prose, just for consideration: Let me have more pity on my own heart. Let me live (being) kind and charitable to my sad self."

Then comes a wonderful word play: "...not live this tormented mind/ With this tormented mind tormenting yet." I try to put it into Subject-Verb-Object form. First let's number the torments: "...not live this tormented mind(1)/ With this tormented mind(2) tormenting(3) yet." Prose: (Let me) not live tormenting(3)(the verb) this tormented mind(1)(the direct object) with this tormented mind(2)(object of the preposition "with"; the prepositional phrase modified the verb, describing how one torments the mind). "Yet" perhaps means—Still? After all this time? It's an adverb modifying the verb, describing when one torments oneself.

And that's the first quartet. All "let me"—Let me have pity on my own heart, let me be kind and charitable to myself, let me not torment my own mind.

What next? "I cast for comfort I can no more get/ By groping round my comfortless, than blind/ Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find/ Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet." We have the contrasts: comfort vs. comfortless, blind eyes & dark vs. day, thirst vs. "thirst's all-in-all" (what's that?). The verb "cast"—to "cast around" for something is to seek it, in a rather desperate style. (Why does it mean that? "Cast" means "throw." I think this usage is a figure of speech based on fishing, like casting a net, or casting your fishing line.) Prose: I cast (around) for comfort (that) I can no more get by groping around my comfortless (he seems to be using "comfortless" as a noun, perhaps signifying my comfortless self, or my comfortless heart or mind—I'm groping around for something that's not there; there is no comfort within me) than blind eyes can find day in their dark(ness), or (than) thirst can find its all-in-all in a world of wet. Blind eyes can't find the daylight is a simple idea, but what is this "thirt's all-in-all" and what is this "world of wet"?

I live in a rainy climate, so "a world of wet" seemed to me a place where there are streams, rivers, wetlands, wet vegetation, wet weather. You could find a drink there, if you're thirsty, but soon you will be thirsty again. That's how I take it, as an allusion to the living water that Jesus spoke of, in John 4, to the Samaritan woman at the well: "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst." We can't find the eternal thirst-quencher even in the wettest climate.

I did also consider that the "world of wet" meant the sea, which cannot quench your thirst.

So that's the second quartet, some comparisons showing how impossible to find comfort. I grope around my mind and heart for comfort but find none, just like blind eyes seek light but can't find it, and thirst is never really quenched.

Then the final sestet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

He addresses himself as "Soul, self...poor Jackself." Soul—the inmost being; self—we're all familiar with that word; Jackself—"Jack" can be colloquial for an ordinary or working-class man; he is addressing himself as you ordinary guy, you everyman. And what does he tell that self?

Prose: I do advise you, (who are jaded), let be. Call your thoughts off awhile, put your thoughts somewhere else from self-torture. Give root-room to comfort (as if comfort is a plant that needs space to grow). Let joy size. This one puzzled me for a while, and I finally looked it up. "Size" can mean to grow. Let joy (increase in) size. Let joy grow—how? from God knows when to God knows what. You don't know when or for how long it will take joy to grow and increase, and you don't know what it will be like when it does grow. But God knows.

And speaking of God, his smile's not wrung, you see. God doesn't force his smile. Rather, at unforeseen times his smile "lights a lovely mile," in the same way that "skies betweenpie mountains." Excuse me? "betweenpie"? When I read the word "pie," what comes into my mind is a pastry. Apple pie, pumpkin pie, etc. Or a slice of it, which is a somewhat triangular shape. At first I was reading it as skies that are between mountains—and the pie, what? Finally I remembered another meaning of "pie." One of my favorite Hopkins poems is "Pied beauty": "Glory be to God for dappled things, etc." And there are pie-bald animals (like Holstein cows) and the Pied Piper of Hamlin, in his many-colored costume.

In this clause, "skies" is the subject and the verb is "betweenpie." That is, the skies create dappled patterns on mountains and their valleys. Any dappled-light mountain pass is surely a lovely mile. And that is God's smile. Lighting a lovely mile is a good thing on life's journey; it happens every once in a while.

So take your mind off yourself and your sins, faults, and weaknesses. Give room in your heart for comfort and joy to grow. As they grow, at times that you don't expect it, God's spontaneous smile will light your way beautifully.

I unpacked it for myself; now I can pack it all back in and just read the poem and give it root-room and let it size.