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 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.
I think we forget that we are in a covenantal world with a covenantal God. The same God who created the world has promised not to destroy it by Flood (cf. Gen. 8:21). Those who think we are on the verge of natural cataclysm by virtue of our industrial activities should read Hopkins' poem carefully. The first stanza begins by declaring the grandeur of God and then listing all the ways this appears not to be the case. Using words like seared and bleared, smudge and trod, Hopkins gives us every reason to doubt his opening assertion. If the poem stopped here it would be a lament of the highest order. But he then goes on to declare how what is unseen, but declared, protects the world from all the horrors mankind can unleash upon it.
This does not give us an excuse, mind you. We are given the command to take dominion over the world, not reduce it to filth and muck. It takes a clear understanding of the covenant and the gospel to understand how we can live in an industrial and commercial world, trust in the power of God to protect that world, and still be responsible for the way we treat the world God has given us.
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