A poem about the majesty of God's creation compared to man's trivial and trite creations.

1. God’s Grandeur Gerald Manley Hopkins

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

7. 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 .

9. 1844 Born July 28 to Manley and Catherine (Smith ) Hopkins, in Stratford, Essex. 1852 Family moves to Hampstead. 1854-63 At Cholmondeley [pronounced Chumly] Grammar School, Highgate. 1863 Enters Balliol College, Oxford. 1866 Received by J.H. Newman into the (Roman) Catholic Church. 1867 Graduates with a "double-first"; considered the "star of Balliol." 1868 Enters the Jesuit Novitiate and burns his early poems. 1872 Discovers the writings of Duns Scotus. 1873-74 Learning Welsh; writes extensive notes on prosody. 1875 The wreck of the Deutschland inspires him to start writing again. 1877 Ordained as a Jesuit priest; begins serving as parish assistant. 1879 Curate at Bedford Leigh, near Manchester, then sent to Liverpool to work among Irish immigrants.

10. 1881 Assistant in a Glasgow parish; ten-month retreat in London. 1882 Becomes teacher of classics at Stonyhurst College. 1884 Appointed Fellow of University College, Dublin, and examiner in Greek for the Royal University of Ireland. 1884-89 Writing the "terrible" sonnets. 1886 Meets W.B. Yeats; neither particularly impressed by the other. 1889 Dies June 8 of typhoid fever. 1918 The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins , notes and introduction by Robert Bridges, then Poet Laureate.