Psalm 51--Patrick Murphy

Painting by Patrick Murphy

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 smeared 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.

Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Also check out Mortal’s industrial rock treatment of this poem–“Bright Wings“

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