“GOD’S GRANDEUR” (1877)

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 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.

God’s Grandeur is a religious poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins. In this sonnet, Hopkins praises the magnificence and glory of God in the world, blending accurate observation with lofty (superior) imagination. Glorifying and praising god’s grandeur the poet describes the magnificence of omnipresent god. The poet also shows contrast between beauty of the nature with ugliness of industrialization and commercial activity. The world is full of the greatness of God. Due to His greatness, the world shines like ‘a shook foil’. It gathers to greatness, as it is full of resources. Despite this fact, human beings act contrary. They don’t follow the commands of God; rather they function to destroy the world. Earlier generations destroyed the earth and so is the case with the present generation.

Human beings act as if they are not rational (intellectual) creatures. As a result of their deed, the earth has become dry; it has the smell of human beings instead of its natural smell. Indeed the earth has reached to the verge (a region marking a boundary) of destruction. Nevertheless, the world is not completely destroyed. Because of the freshness that is inside things, nature keeps on regenerating. The sun sets in the evening only to reappear in the morning. These all happenings are the results of the god’s protection. He protects the earth just like a bird broods over the eggs.

The poet is of the opinion that human beings acts are always directed towards destruction: knowingly or unknowingly they destroy. Though human beings destroy, the nature regenerates because of the omnipresent and omnipotent nature of god. Everything in this world has been made ugly by materialism and commercial activities because of human beings involvement in monetary (financial) gain. The freshness and beauty of nature have been blocked by industrial activities and fragrance of nature has been drowning in the foul order (bad smell) that comes from man and machinery. Despite human activities tending to destroy the beauty of nature, it remains fresh and undestroyed. The soil is bare now because of the destruction of natural green growth by human beings. The earth is now bare, having lost all living beauty. Man is insensitive to this bareness. Because of the shoes, he can’t feel whether the earth is soft or hard. The poet says that in the depth of the earth there is never ending source of freshness with which the nature renews itself when the spring comes. The poet symbolize the sun rise as the renewal of the nature like the bird that broods and protect us despite our unwise activities and indifference towards god because god’s beauty is changeless and eternal.

To sum up, this poem can be called a protest against the materialism of the Victorian age. Although man is greedy and wasteful, he may still hope to be saved as long as God is there. This is an explicitly religious poem.