Friday, May 9, 2003

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 ah! bright wings.

... Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Penguin Classics, 1953, p. 27 (see the book; see also Gen. 1:2; Eccl. 1:8-9; 2:16-18; John 15:26; more at Futility, Holy Spirit, Man, Nature, Toil)

 
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2024, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
        with Robert Douglas, principal contributor
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 01/17/17

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