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.

God’s Grandeur
God’s Grandeur" starts off with a claim: the earth is full God’s special power,
God’s vitality. But the earth is ultimately temporary. The fire will go from it
one day. It will reach a peak, then slowly spread, and then collapse.
(This is confusing – don’t try to take Hopkins too literally. Let your
imagination feel and see the images he presents).

The speaker states that the natural world is inseparable from God, but at
the same time temporary. The speaker wants to know why don’t people
don't take better care of the natural world. Why don’t they recognize and
respect the power of God that is running through our environment? He says
that people have been endlessly tromping and trudging through the world
for so long, and now the surface of the earth is calloused and burnt over by
industry. It looks blurry and out of focus with all this industry, and endless
hard work covering it.

According to the speaker, we humans stunk up the earth – everything looks

and smells like people, and all the bad things people do. (The speaker
doesn’t sound too keen on people here.) The ground we walk on doesn’t
have any flowers or trees or grass on it. And we have to wear shoes, so we
can no longer feel the ground itself. We have lost our connection with the
natural world.

But don’t worry – the speaker assures us – nature never stops. It’s hiding
underground, like a hidden spring. And even though the sun always sets in
the west bringing darkness and night, it always rises again in the east,
bringing light and morning.

The speaker assures us that morning follows night, and light follows
darkness, because the Holy Ghost is always hovering over the messed up
world, pondering deeply, and worried. The upside, though, is that the Holy
Ghost watches over the world and treats it in much the same way a bird
would treat her unhatched eggs, providing comfort, security, warmth,
beauty, and motion.