Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
My friend P:
I don't agree there is an absolute perfect understanding that exists in a platonic sense.
The impactive effects and affects, plus impressions, of diction, syntax, form, sound and reference will always add nuances understanding.
My reading juxtaposes two contending ideals of justice, based on the words 'just', one before the caesura in the first line, the other before the stop in line two. The whole poem agonises over this blocked justice.
One 'just' is amoral, the other moral. An opposing duality of divine versus human, absolute versus subjective, abstract versus experienced is thus achieved. One form of 'just' is indifferent and self absorbed, the other is self caring and all caring. One cannot be contended against, the other exists through pleading; one is self rewarding and implacable, the other serves without reward and is painfully denied its very essence. One is pre-existent, the other must be affirmed. The poem explores comparatively how the speaker's quest for affirmation is thwarted.
My response:
I like your note a lot.
My sense is that there is an interrelation between the opening justs. The first “indeed” suggests a given, an assumption, that beyond doubt God’s justice will hear out Hopkins’s complaint. (And the legal implication of a trial is apparent in the language—just, contend, plead; Lord and sir are ways of addressing a common law judge.) So, “indeed” suggests faith that is rather implacable. Paraphrase: “Of course, Lord, your divine justice will hear my complaint without damning me. But still disturbing my faith is the disparity between my fruitlessness despite its fervency whereas sinners thrive.”
Hopkins’s faith in his moral capacity to question his Lord without incurring His wrath speaks to an Old Testament conception of a God who is somewhat human, who has ways worthy of complaint and can shoulder questioning, which is to say, can take “a good talking to.” So the divine, inscrutable just is certainly separable from the earthly just, but they’re not completely detachable. God’s justice includes hearing Hopkins out, as Hopkins in his faith sees it.
By pleading that an enemy couldn’t be doing him worse, Hopkins brings his complaint to the very edge of his faith. The conjunction of friend and enemy in the line, however, suggests the extent of faith’s strain without tearing as the latter “friend” contains “enemy.” The friend is declared; the enemy is hypothesized to make a deeply frustrated point.
So this goes to my view that Hopkins never loses his assumption that the initial “indeed” lays down. The complaint can get full vent within Hopkins’s faith in God’s justice, with which he can grapple.
The case for the justness of Hopkins’s complaint is then laid out in particulars: spare times of whoring and drunkenness yield more earthly delight in sin and reward than what all the hours of Hopkins’s labours in his faith bring him. The intimacy of Hopkins’s relation to his God is evident in his “See” heading the next particular: the self replenishment of refulgent nature compared to his barrenness; nature’s sustaining fragility; the leasts of nature, birds, building compared to his straining fruitlessness in endeavour and in life as captured in this amazing line:
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
The line falls down in the middle capturing Hopkins verging on collapse or break down, staved off only, ironically, by his acknowledgement of his virtual nothingness: “not,” “no,” reminiscent, to me, of Lear’s “No, no, no, no!”—contexts of course much different but abiding sense of negation similar.
“Time’s eunuch” heads his final and most devastating particular. Hopkins sees himself as metaphorically castrated, serving a temporal ruler, time itself, just as eunuchs sexlessly serve earthly rulers. To see himself as a eunuch suggests a sexlessness, a barrenness, beyond impotence, a sexlessness that has no possible seeds of rejuvenation as he attends to his faith and his work all while time hurls him inexorably toward death.
But again in an irony similar to negation staving off his near break down in ... birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,...Hopkins by bringing himself to the peak of his complaint, metaphorically unmanning himself—“Time’s eunuch”—has it seems expiated, if that’s the right word, or, maybe better, worked out psychologically, what has so deeply troubled him. For from bringing his complaint to its peak come the springs of a turning-to-life restoration of hope in faith: “Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.” God, in his justness, may do this, Hopkins’s fervent faith now tells him.
And in that born-anew faith-brought hope, might one argue, the opening and separable two justs meet?
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