Full text
God's Grandeur
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918), as in the library text of Hopkins's Poems (Project Gutenberg #22403)
Source
Source: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918), as in the library text of Hopkins's Poems (Project Gutenberg #22403) Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22403 Public domain basis: Written 1877; first published 1918 by Robert Bridges; public domain in the United States. Coverage: Complete: the sonnet; three lines that the source edition wraps for width are rejoined.
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.