God’s Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
written 1877; published 1918

Cold Library · Open Stacks · S-004023 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/004023
Rights: Written in 1877 and first published in 1918; the author died in 1889 and the editor in 1930. Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026. Guidance, not legal advice.
Source: Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Gerard_Manley_Hopkins/God's_Grandeur (retrieved 2026-10-11)
Generated 2026-10-14 from https://coldlibrary.com/en/open-stacks/hopkins-gods-grandeur

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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;
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.