| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 194. God’s Grandeur |
| By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) |
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| 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. | |
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