Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Gerard Manley Hopkins (18441889)Gods 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; | 5 |
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; | |
And bears 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; | 10 |
And though the last lights from the black west went, | |
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs— | |
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent | |
World broods with warm breast, and with, ah, bright wings. | |