.God's Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

 
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; 
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil 
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? 
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;         
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 
  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil 
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 
 
And for all this, nature is never spent; 
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;         
And though the last lights off the black West went 
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.  

 
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That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire 
and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
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a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

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