God’s Grandeur

In the tradition of a sonnet, Hopkins’s poem “God’s Grandeur” can be viewed as a love poem written to God. Yet, the poem transcends this tradition to become something more dynamic, functioning also as an argument for Hopkins’s religious views on nature, God, and humankind’s relation to both.

Hopkins begins his sonnet with a series of similes and metaphors to establish a connection between God and the world. The first line provides a metaphor for the “grandeur of God” as a “charge” that permeates the world, as if God was an electrifying force. The next two similes follow a similar pattern, revealing God’s grandeur to be at once a “flame” that rapidly ushers forth from the world “like shining from shook foil,” then as a slow gathering “to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / crushed” (Lines 2-3). Hopkins captures in these two images a portrait of God’s grandeur simultaneously as a passionate, exuberant explosion of life and as a quieter energy that simmers beneath the surface of the world.

However, the poem pivots in the fourth line when Hopkins poses the question, “Why do men then now not reck his rod?” (Line 4). While the question goes unanswered throughout the poem, Hopkins attempts to show in the following lines the nature of humankind’s inability to witness God’s presence in the world:

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 (Lines 5-8).

The above lines end the first stanza with a view of humanity that is less hopeful than the outset of the poem would imply. He describes the way in which “Generations [of humankind] have trod, have trod, have trod” (Line 5), illustrating a picture of humanity as an army marching over the earth, unaware and ignorant to the ways in which God enervates the world. Hopkins further locates the source of humanity’s misgivings in “trade” (Line 5). While he does not explicitly state this, Hopkins implies that people’s selfishness and greed for money are like a stain that defaces the beauty of nature. Despite all the “toil” and work and commerce (Line 5), Hopkins argues, humankind only serves to destroy the earth, which he describes as “bare now” and wearing “man’s smudge” and covered in “man’s smell” (Lines 7-8).

However, one might also read the line above “have trod, have trod, have trod” (Line 5) as Hopkins’s view of humankind as unfeeling and thoughtless, mindlessly trudging across the earth. Life, for humanity, has become a dull, monotonous routine, and because of this, people are incapable of witnessing God’s presence in the world. Such an analysis would align with Hopkins’s final line of the first stanza, where he describes humankind’s inability to “feel” the earth beneath its feet, “being shod” (Line 8). This unfeeling nature to the world is humankind’s greatest sin, and it’s why, Hopkins would argue, humans are incapable of recking God’s rod.

The final stanza transitions out of Hopkins’s pessimistic view of humanity and returns to a more hopeful tone, depicting nature as an entity that is persistent and “never spent” (Line 9), that can overcome humankind’s smudge and smell. He double-downs on this image by suggesting that in nature “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things” (Line 10). This idea of “freshness” establishes a clear antithesis to the previous lines about nature’s decay at the hands of human trade and toil, thus elevating the natural world above humankind’s disbelief and mindlessness.

Utilizing the tropes of sunset and sunrise, the poem paints a portrait of Hopkins’s renewed faith in the natural world and his own religious vocation. While Line 11 states, “And though the last lights off the black West went,” conjuring an image of the darkness akin to his description of humankind’s transgression and decay, he follows up with an image of light: “Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs” (Line 12). These lines function almost as a standalone metaphor for Hopkins’s entire poem, shifting from darkness to the light, from night to day, ending on an image of the sunrise, signifying the speaker’s renewal of hope.

Yet, to fully return to the poem’s beginning, much like the cycles of the natural world and of seasons, Hopkins transitions the poem again out of a secular description of the world to a more religious and divine mode of speech, mirroring the poem’s opening lines. He writes, “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings” (Lines 13-14). For Hopkins, the natural world is a source of the speaker’s renewed faith. This final image describes the Holy Ghost as having a “warm breast” and “bright wings,” comparing the Holy Ghost to a bird, perhaps evoking the Christian symbol of the dove. The exclamatory “ah!” that precedes “bright wings” in Line 14 reflects the speaker’s outcry of joy, indicating a moment of the religious and the divine. This image of the Holy Ghost as a great bird hovering over the earth reinforces Hopkins’s optimism and reestablishes the connection between the natural world and God, signaling the power of nature as a revivifying spiritual force.