September 6: All Her Strength, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Carrion Comfort," New Cartoon

"Good-bye!" she whispered.  Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.

Charlotte's last words in the book.  It's an incredibly sad moment.  It depressed me so much as a child I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for a half hour.  It felt like I had lost my best friend.  Of course, it's natural.  Spiders do not have long life spans, and E. B. White is being accurate in his account of Charlotte's end.  Charlotte must die.


You'll forgive me if I'm in a sort of darksome mood this evening.  I don't know why this pall has settled upon me.  Perhaps it's my week-long illness.  Perhaps I'm too tired.  Perhaps it's the sound of my neighbor's lawnmower, a dull, lonely drone.  Or perhaps it's the silence of my house.  My kids are spending the night at grandma's house.  My wife is working.

Whatever the reason, I'm a little sad this evening.  Rereading the end of Charlotte's Web only emphasizes my state of mind.  I'm feeling a little stuck maybe.  At the beginning of the summer, I had this grand idea that I was on the verge of obtaining a full-time teaching position at the university.  That I would be able to support my family doing exactly what I love doing:  teaching and writing.  Yet, here I sit, at the beginning of September, facing another year of part-time happiness.  Stuck.

I will not prolong this meander into self pity.  It's tedious, I know.  Forgive me.  I will be on to happier subjects tomorrow.  Good poetry.  Good books.  Good movies.  Good family.  Good life.  Tonight, however, I give you a really good, dark poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Saint Marty is summoning all his strength to wave at you and say, "Good night."

Carrion Comfort

by:  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more.  I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me?
     scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
     and flee?
     Why?  That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
     cheer.
Cheer whom though?  the hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
     foot trod
Me?  or me that fought him?  O which one?  is it each one?  That
     night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!)
     my God.

Confessions of Saint Marty