GOD’S GRANDEUR
The world is charged with Your grandeur, O God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do we then now not reck Your rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared smeared with toil;
And sears our smudge and shares our 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 Your Holy Power over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings
PIED BEAUTY
Glory be, O God, for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;
Landscapes plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
You co-create, whose beauty is past change.
Praise, God!
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest and English poet. Most of his poetry remained unpublished until after his death, when he was recognized as one of the most daring Victorian poets for his innovative use of meter and imagery.
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