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Poem: “God’s Grandeur”

by on Mar 23, 2012 in Poetry
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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


Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, England in 1844. He was a Jesuit priest and a poet. During his lifetime, most of his poems were rejected for publication. After a difficult life filled with depression and what he considered personal failures, Hopkins died of Typhoid fever in 1889. He was 44 years old. However, on his deathbed his depression seemed to have left him, his last words being, “"I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life." He is thought of as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. He is famous for his use of sprung rhythm, at a time when metered rhythm was the norm.