Gerard Manley Hopkins

God’s Grandeur (1877)

	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
4	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 & shares man's smell: the soil
8	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
12		Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
	Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
		World broods with warm breast & with ah! bright wings.