It gathers to a greatness

Just for the sake of some balance, here is the believer's take on the many wonders of nature ...

... the sonnet below, "God's Grandeur", was written in 1877 by Gerard Manley Hopkins; whose poetry I do really like.

Personally though, I'm with Fiona Benson on this --- and, of course, also with Ruth Padel; whose own work - it could be argued? - is but a lineal succession from Charles Darwin himself ;-)


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.

---

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1899)

---