Dearest Freshness and Ah! Bright Wings

The Dearest Freshness by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2014
The Dearest Freshness by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2014

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 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.

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