Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 3
Context: When I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived till day. And after this I languored forth two days and two nights, and on the third night I weened oftentimes to have passed; and so weened they that were with me.
And being in youth as yet, I thought it great sorrow to die; — but for nothing that was in earth that meliked to live for, nor for no pain that I had fear of: for I trusted in God of His mercy. But it was to have lived that I might have loved God better, and longer time, that I might have the more knowing and loving of God in bliss of Heaven. For methought all the time that I had lived here so little and so short in regard of that endless bliss, — I thought nothing.
“That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”
"Carrion Comfort", lines 13-14
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81
English poet 1844–1889Related quotes
“Thank God, I have done my duty.”
Statement among his final dying words. [citation needed]
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)
“God made night
But
Man made darkness.”
Poem God Made Night, Small Dreams of a Scorpion: Poems (1972)
To his brother Louis at the Siege of Harlem (1573), as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 68
“In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel…”
The Case for God, first broadcast on BBC1, 6 September 2010
“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!"”
and all was light.
Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton.
En una noche oscura,
con ansias, en amores inflamada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!,
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada;
One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings — ah, the sheer grace! —
I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, — ah, the sheer grace! — in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.
Variant translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night and by the secret stair I quickly fled.
The veil concealed my eyes while all within lay quiet as the dead
Variant adapted for music by Loreena McKennitt (1994)
Dark Night of the Soul