Nature and Poetry: Reflections on God’s Grandeur

The morning sky and arrangement of clouds (last photo) reminded me of a poem from my favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem, God’s Grandeur, speaks of the beauty of God’s creation and how, despite all of man’s destruction, “nature is never spent“.

It’s a good reminder of God’s love for each and everyone of us, His love is never spent (exhausted) but constant, relentless, and beautiful like His natural creation. He is always searching for us, calling out to us in this sullied Eden.

I’ve paired the poem with images from around our property.

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 seared 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.