“The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God…”1
Let Hopkins famous high stepping, sprung rhythm leap off your tongue.
We don’t hear much of grandeur to start -
‘ooze of oil / Crushed […] generations have trod, have trod, have trod […] man’s smudge […] man’s smell…”
Hopkins buries us in endless toil, in commerce and ugliness and trade. Then the sonnet takes its famous turn - “And for all this…” God asserts His goodness in the “dearest freshness deep down things.”
Dearest freshness deep down things.
I think of flowers bursting to bloom - root vegetables - soil, the tangle of roots - living water, the rebellious bursting of the world - as man trods, trods, trods, on overhead.
Hopkins gives us the image of a world at war and at work, but always enclosed in the protective roosting wings of the Holy Ghost - like a mother bird over a precious egg - “with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
In this month’s2 Sound Escape I introduce you to Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins converted to Catholicism (alienating his High Anglican Church family in the process) and became a Jesuit priest, often struggling to determine the role art and poetry should play in his work.3 Hopkins suffered from debilitating depression and melancholy for most of his life, but on his death bed he uttered these last words -
“I am so happy, I am so happy.”
A man of contradictions and struggle to be certain, but in this most famous of his poems, we are left with a protective, embracing view of the world - a sacramental world infused with love and purpose.
