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 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 eastwards springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast, and with, ah! bright wings.