This a brilliant account of an authentic encounter with a poem. That said, I do not agree that …
This is emphatically not a Christian poem; it is as dark as Frost. All that our greatest sensors, our farthest probes, are met with is in the final couplet: “It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.”
I pass muster as a Christian, I think, and faith, as St. John of the Cross made clear, has its dark nights. Recall that on the cross Jesus cried out "My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?" I have always thought that is the moment when he was most human. Hopkins does seem to have wrestled with what we call depression (see "No worst, there is none"), but his last words were "I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life."
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