God's Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844-1889)

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 bears 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 from the black west went, 
   Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs? 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 
  World broods with warm breast, and with, ah, bright wings.

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

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