Better than Despair
Sophia at Intagliod up in Blue and Chicky Wang are sharing the first poems that knocked their socks off. Here's mine. I stumbled on it at fifteen, a lonely atheist harnessed in an advanced state of adolescent despair. When I read Hopkins's words, I felt my heartbeat quicken and the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. This was better. This was better than despair.
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.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Happy New Year!
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.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Happy New Year!
posted by Wanda Ball at 7:22 PM
4 Comments:
Okay, but of course, because Hopkins is so weirdly disbelieving and despairing in the oddest distillation of consonent and song!
Ah! Bright wings indeed, Wanda Ball!
Why is it that when you are 15 you are more ready to be blown away than later in life? Is it hormones or something? The crowding of the brain over time? Or?
oh, yes, oh dearest hopkins! what a lucky 15 year old. it took me must longer to find him, but now he has a permanent place on my back. hopkins is the relentlessness i so admire.
Sophia: Yup, Hopkins does like his chewy consonant-studded Anglo-Saxonisms.
Chicky: Scientifically speaking, it's because our brains are made out of cheese. As we age, our brains harden and molder. Hence, our lack of poetic response--and growing stink--as we get older.
Kristi: I didn't feel very lucky at fifteen, but does anybody? Nice photo, by the way :-)
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