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The Grandeur of God

by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford University Poet

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 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 soul

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 through 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.