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. | |
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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.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"
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