God's Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

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, ate 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, 1877)