Sunday sonnet: Gerard Manley Hopkins

More dense expression from Mr. Hopkins, an 1877 poem about the wonders of the deity.


"God's Grandeur"

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
- It will flame out, like the 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;
- An 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.


Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdcdcd