(one of my favorite poems for this beautiful Saturday)
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.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
Something about the cooler weather in the fall time leads me to pull out the books of poetry that have become more of a decoration on our shelves (which is kind of sad. Sorry, poetry.) Right now, I’m reading through a book of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems and prose in the evenings. I only knew two of his poems before I started this book and am enjoying learning more about him as a person. I highly recommend reading his poems slowly and out loud. The way they move and twirl in the air–well, they just don’t sound the same inside one’s head. We bought the book used, but Penguin Classics has released his Poems and Prose
