Friday, July 27, 2007

God's Grandeur

I've started a new personal project. I am collecting favorite writings to bind and have on hand to read when I need some inspiration or just want to enjoy good writing. So far I've collected poems by Tennyson, Donne, Herbert, Hopkins, Browning and selections from Dostoevsky, Tolkien, and T.H. White. Here is a poem I read this morning:

God's Grandeur

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.

2 Comments:

Blogger C.Brubaker said...

Thanks Marion. What a wonderful poem. Most likely many people willl know the author, and I know I have heard this poem before, but I cannot remember who wrote it...
can you add that?

What a great personal project. I started something similar a number of years ago...keeping favorite quotes and poetry in a journal, both to enjoy rereading whenever I wanted to , but also to be able to FIND them when I wanted to! :>)

9:15 AM  
Blogger M Clark said...

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

2:22 PM  

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