…the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
“God grandeur”
This year the feast of Pentecost falls on the anniversary of the death of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins on June 8, 1889.
Holy Spirit window, St. Peter’s, the Vatican
“God’s grandeur” is one of my favorite poems, celebrating the presence of God in the world. It is also a poem with a very ecological flavor.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God
But Hopkins laments what we humans have done to the earth
And all is seared with trade: bleared, smeared with toil;
And wear’s man’s smudge and shares man’s smell…
We have even forgotten how to experience the earth:
…the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
Yet Hopkins maintains hope
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things
How can this be?
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
The Spirit of God renews the face of the earth, renews us, and offers us hope. There is a freshness – the dearest freshness – deep down things – if we would open our hearts.
No wonder the last words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, after a life filled with melancholy, were
I am so happy!
The full text of the poem can be found here.
walk the way 