God' Grandeur Poem

"God's Grandeur"
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
1.The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

2 It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
3 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
4Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
5Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
6 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
7 And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
8Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
9And for all this, nature is never spent;
10 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
11And though the last lights off the black West went
12 Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
13Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
14 World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Hopkins wrote "God's Grandeur" in 1877, at around the same time as he wrote a
number of sonnets, including "Spring" (1877), "In the Valley of the Elwy" (1877),
and "The Sea and the Skylark" (1877). All of these poems share similar
characteristics, both thematically and stylistically. Thematically, they focus on
nature and God—on Hopkins's sense that God is suffused and accessible
through nature—and his resulting concern about the destruction of nature by
people and the forces of industrialization. Stylistically, "God's Grandeur" contains
some of the metrical complexity often found in Hopkins's work— including
examples of Hopkins's own invented meter of sprung rhythm— though "God's
Grandeur" is perhaps a bit less extreme in its metrical experimentation than other
Hopkins poems are.
In some ways, Hopkins's poetry is of his time. His concerns about the dirtiness
and corruption of industrialization are also evident in the work of other Victorian
poets such as Christina Rossetti and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as in the
work of fiction writers like Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. But in other ways,
Hopkins's poetry, including "God's Grandeur," seems to both anticipate the future
and connect to the deeper past. Hopkins's style, with its meter loosed from the
strict rhythms of the Romantic poets of the early 19th century or of most other
Victorian poets, is often seen as anticipating the rise of free verse in the early
20th century. Meanwhile, Hopkins's sense of the connection between God and
nature—so powerfully evoked in "God's Grandeur"—is more reminiscent of the
work of George Herbert (1593-1633) and other Metaphysical poets than it is of
most of his Victorian contemporaries (though certainly some poets of Hopkins's
time, including Christina Rossetti, shared Hopkins's religious concerns).
Historical Context
In 1877, England was in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, a
period of rapid technological advancement in both manufacturing and
transportation that was dramatically transforming English society. Most crucial for
Hopkins, the Second Industrial Revolution led to widespread degradation of
nature from the exploitative mining and harvesting of natural resources, pollution
emitted by factories, and the expansion of urban and suburban spaces into what
was formerly wilderness.
Many artists and writers (and people from all walks of life) viewed this destruction
of nature with alarm and despair. For Hopkins, who saw nature as an expression
of God, the impact of industrialization on nature was particularly painful. This
impact certainly helped shape his misanthropic sense— expressed at times in
"God's Grandeur"—that, in comparison to nature, mankind is, as Hopkins once
put it, "backward."
 “God's Grandeur” Setting
o The setting of "God’s Grandeur" is, to put it broadly, the Earth. While the
poem could be seen as being specifically set in the time period of
the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century, when it was
written, it can describe any time in which nature is under threat and
mankind seems disconnected from God.
The poem also looks deeper into nature (some might argue it even
looks underground, though that’s probably too literal a reading) in order to
capture the way that nature endures, tended by God, always ready to
spring forth again.
 “God's Grandeur” Speaker
o The speaker of “God’s Grandeur” is anonymous and genderless. While it’s
possible to argue that Hopkins himself is the speaker, there isn’t definitive
evidence in the poem that this is the case. Regardless, the speaker is
suffering. This suffering stems from what the speaker experiences as a
disconnect: his or her own profound sense of the connection between
nature and God—that God, essentially, can be experienced through
nature—in contrast to the way that the rest of humanity not only don’t
seem to feel that connection but is in fact heedlessly destroying nature.
The speaker’s despair about what humanity has done is so powerful that,
in lines 7-8, the speaker might even be described as being misanthropic (a
hater of humankind).
In the second stanza, the speaker’s suffering eases as he or she realizes
that, despite humanity’s destruction of nature, nature (and God) is too
strong and will endure and, like a rising sun, re-emerge. The poem never
makes clear, though, whether the speaker’s misanthropy eases along with
his or her torment. After all, when the speaker describes the renewed
world through the metaphor of God as a kind of mother bird and the
broken world as an egg from which a new future will emerge, humanity is
unmentioned. While the speaker’s faith in God and nature is clear,
whether humanity is a part of the speaker’s vision of a renewed world is
up for debate.

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"God's Grandeur"

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

1.The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

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