In a world that is being demolished and exploited by mankind, there are still moments that make people like me hope that we will not ruin our planet. Not because we won’t try our damnedest, but because nature will balance things, in the end. How could something so beautiful be ruined? This video I’m about to share reminded me of a beautiful poem that I analyzed for my British literature class when focusing on the Romanic Period. It’s called “God’s Grandeur” and was written by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived from 1844 to 1889.
| God’s Grandeur |
| THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. |
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| It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; |
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| It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil |
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| Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? |
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| Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; |
5 |
| And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; |
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| And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil |
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| Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. |
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| And for all this, nature is never spent; |
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| There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; |
10 |
| And though the last lights off the black West went |
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| Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— |
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| Because the Holy Ghost over the bent |
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| World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. |
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brainreader 
November 6th, 2011 at 12:39 PM
Love Hopkins. And this exhilirating video makes an evocative addendum to the poem. There’s something very powerful about bringing the two together. First, Hopkins laments that we (“man,” he says) have so trod over the earth that we have besmirched it (in fact, we no longer even feel the land through our shoes). Then the video presents two young women setting off from that besmirched land, onto water, to be overwhelmed by a spectacular murmuration over the deep. Very intriguing.
November 6th, 2011 at 6:54 PM
I agree!! I love when Hopkins refers to nature’s beauty as the shining of shook foil and oozing oil, both man made objects. And he refers to men who don’t “reck his rod” meaning men don’t revere his power. I think this poem is one of the best from the Romantic period, but don’t ask me to say that with certainty. There’s a lot of poets that don’t get the attention they deserve. I was pretty grateful for the classes I did take.