Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

shook foil

Hopkins explained this in a letter: gold foil when shaken gives off zigzag flashes, like forked lightning. He's describing how divine presence breaks through physical reality.

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?

reck his rod

"Reck" = heed or care about. "Rod" = God's authority. Hopkins is asking why humans ignore divine power despite evidence all around them.

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

being shod

Wearing shoes cuts us off from direct contact with earth. The Industrial Revolution literally put barriers between humans and nature—Hopkins wrote this in 1877 during England's peak industrialization.

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.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Hopkins's Sprung Rhythm

Hopkins invented sprung rhythm to break Victorian poetry's metronomic beat. Count the stresses, not syllables: "Generations have trod, have trod, have trod" hammers three beats like boots on pavement. Traditional meter would smooth this out; Hopkins wants you to feel the repetitive crushing.

Look at the sound clusters: "seared/trade/bleared/smeared" pile up harsh consonants. Then "soil/toil" and "shod/trod/rod" create rhyme-echo throughout. He's not decorating—he's making language physical. The poem sounds industrial, clogged, until line 9's pivot: "And for all this." Suddenly the rhythm opens up.

The final image shifts to soft sounds: "broods with warm breast" uses rounded vowels and gentle consonants. Hopkins structures sound to mirror meaning—industrial noise gives way to natural restoration.

The Jesuit Watching England Industrialize

Hopkins wrote this in 1877 as a Jesuit priest watching England's countryside disappear under factories. "All is seared with trade" isn't metaphor—it's observation. The soil is bare from overuse; people literally can't feel earth through their factory boots.

CONTEXT Hopkins had quit poetry for seven years after becoming a Jesuit, thinking it too self-indulgent. This poem marks his return, written after his superior suggested he commemorate a shipwreck. Once he started writing again, this Italian sonnet (octave problem, sestet resolution) poured out.

The turn at "And for all this" is the theological move: human destruction can't exhaust divine presence. "The dearest freshness deep down things" locates God beneath the surface damage. Hopkins believed nature constantly regenerates because the Holy Ghost actively sustains it—not a metaphor, but his literal cosmology as a priest-poet.