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.



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