ABSTRACT
Carrion Comfort is one of the six sonnets of desolation, the so called 'terrible sonnets', which Hopkins wrote in Dublin during the first eight months of 1885. There is a remarkable energy in the sonnet. It comes, of course, first from the images of physical struggle, of wrestling, to denote 'the war within'. In the second quatrain of the octet, the mysterious adversary becomes the winnower; then, in the sestet, the Master, whose rod and hand Hopkins has kissed. The final three lines take us back to the wrestling and the agonized questions; and the sonnet ends with the bitter authenticity of all he has gone through. In Carrion Comfort Hopkins refuses to give in, to 'feast' on despair; he recognizes, in the final startled line, that it is God with whom he has been wrestling; and that, despite his frightened questioning, good will ultimately come from God's crushing him.
