God’s Grandeur
Poetry Explication
English 104
12/9/13
In the poem, “God’s Grandeur”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins (rpt. In James P. Place Literature: A reader for Freshman Composition ll, 2nd ed. [Boston: Pearson, 2012] 418), there are many different points on nature in our world as it exists today. Hopkins is basically asking why people don’t take better care of it. He wants to know why the world is slowly drifting away from its naturally born feel. The natural feel of the world no longer exists in the world today. It is paved with roads, not flowers and trees that were originated on the land itself. In the poem Hopkins says even though the sun sets and brings darkness, the sun always rises and brings light into the world. The real meaning behind the poem moreover is that god created this world into how it should be not for human to mess around with its natural feeling. Hopkins uses very tricky language in order to capture your mind about what is happening and how life should be on earth.
The poem is a sonnet designed with just two stanzas. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. In this case, composed of two parts, the first stanza is an octave (8 lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines).
The rhyme scheme for the octave is (a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a), and the sestet rhymes in the pattern (c-d-c-d-c-d).
This poem is divided up in the first stanza which describes the world as it was created to how man has treated it. Then following is the second stanza which describes how nature described responds to all of it. The final lines state that daylight continues to follow night, because the Holy Ghost is hovering over the world not happy about what is present in the world but is kind and caring.
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In stanza 1 he describes the world as being changed from its natural feel. Hopkins states that the natural world is basically inseparable from God. But, at the same time is saying that the world is briefly in existence. He also states this, “And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and bears man’s smell; the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod” (Place 418).
It says that trade and industry has polluted the world. The world is now blurred or smeared with the badness. The author is also saying that that the world use to be made up of just the surface of grass, dirt, flowers, trees but now is made up of roads and everything that takes away the natural way of how the world should feel. Hopkins also implies that we cover up our feet (shoes) and don’t get the natural feel of the land like you should.
In stanza 2 Hopkins explains that even through all that we have done to this world nature still acts in the way it should. The poem ends stating, “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” (Place 418).
This is telling us that the world is abused but never is severed. The sun will always set in the west and will always rise in the east. All of this is happening because of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is not keen of what is occurring throughout the world but is kind and caring so the world will go on.
This poet was not just a poet, he was a poet and a full time priest. Reverend Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest. His fame established him to become one of the leading Victorian poets. He was a student of Oxford and became known as the “Star of Balliol”. When Hopkins became part of the Society of Jesus in 1868, he burned all of the writing that he had done up to that point of his life and quit writing for seven years. Eventually he transferred to a church in Dublin and was appointed professor of classics at the Catholic University College in Dublin. He continued his writing and developed a writing technique that he called “Sprung Rhythm”. The purpose of this technique was made to help the poetry flow easily from one line to another. Hopkins later died in 1889 due to the typhoid fever. When Hopkins passed away he left his work in the hands of his good friend, Robert Bridges. It wasn’t until many years later when his work was thought to be ready to reveal to the world. In 1918 the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins was finally published and became a world-wide known poet.
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