"Hopkins"

Picture by: Jimmy Meyer

"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 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.

Hopkins, Gerard. “Pied Beauty.” British Literature. Ed. Ronald A Horton. 2nd ed. Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2003. 675. Print.

Hopkins, Gerard. “God’s Grandeur.” British Literature. Ed. Ronald A Horton. 2nd ed. Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2003. 676. Print.

Rhythm

The first stanza, the first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines rhyme with each other, and the second, third, sixth and seventh lines rhyme with each other.

ABBAABBA

In the second stanza, the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth lines rhyme with each other, and the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth lines rhyme with each other.

ABABAB