Sunday, November 23, 2008

"God's grandeur"

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.



Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

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