O with what darkness do we cloak thy light

When I read John Masefield’s sonnets they seem to take me to other things I have read or seen or watched or thought. There is a religious quality which reminds me of verses from the Bible or hymns I have sung, and yet there is no god with a capital G. This sonnet reminded me of the last few moments of  the 1957 black and white film, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’; the hero Scott Carey is so infinitesimally small that he has to give himself up to the idea that he will disappear altogether… although there is a religious slant which may have not been there in the original story by Richard Matheson.

I am also reminded of Hamlet’s line,  ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams… except that in this sonnet there are no bad dreams’. There are also resonances of Blake’s poem, The Tyger.

O little self, within whose smallness lies
All that man was, and is, and will become,
Atom unseen that comprehends the skies
And tells the tracks by which the planets roam.
That, without moving, knows the joys of wings,
The tiger’s strength, the eagle’s secrecy,
And in the hovel can consort with kings,
Or clothe a god with his own mystery.
O with what darkness do we cloak thy light,
What dusty folly gather thee for food,
Thou who alone art knowledge and delight,
The heavenly bread, the beautiful, the good.
O living self, O god, O morning star,
Give us thy light, forgive us what we are.