God's Grandeur

God's Grandeur

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, at the brown brink eastward, springs - 

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.