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August 07, 2005

God's Grandeur

In the 8am and 10 am services on Sunday, August 7th, guest preacher John Oda-Burns, in the course of his memorable sermon on the relation between God and the created, material world, referenced a poem by 19th century English poet (and Jesuit priest) Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem is "God's Grandeur", and it is a particular favorite of mine as well. For the benefit of all who heard this sermon, and those who missed it as well, The text of the poem, just two stanza's, is reproduced below.

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.

(Source page)

I first found the poem by hearing it sung in a choral treatment by Samuel Barber. Besides being a beautiful piece of choral music, some of the lyric stand out and catch one's attention, especially the reference to "flame out", as well as "Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward" for which Barber composed especially beautiful melody.

With the World Wide Web at my fingertips I had no trouble finding the original text. Apparently this is a popular poem with college professors as well, as many of the "hits" returned from Google were links to college term papers about this poem, available for immediate download (for a reasonable fee) to any student with a deadline approaching.

Some of these scholarly analyses are available without fee, thankfully. This one, by Skylar Hamilton Burris, might provide some insight into the poem as well as some insight into how much an academic reader can over-think a poem that is wonderful to appreciate without all this deep cogitation.

I'll pass on a few hints. For the line "ooze of oil, crushed", think about olives, bitter fruits enfused with a wonderful oil that oozes out when the olives are crushed. Burris also sees reference to the wonder of the Lord's blood, which oozes forth when he is crushed on the cross, but I prefer to stick with olives.

The line "reck his rod" uses the word "reck" to mean "listen to" or "consider" or "obey"; think "reckon", and the "rod" could be the rod of authority,or it could be a reference to Christ, God's son or "rod". It's similar, in concept, to the phrase, "rod of Jesse", a "rod" off the vine or root. So the line "why do men then now not reck his rod?" can be taken to mean, "why do men not obey his authority?", or "why do men not listen to his son?"

I also found a short video, on a web site for the "Favorite Poems Project", of poet Stanley Kunitz reading God's Grandeur by Hopkins and describing why it is his favorite poem. (URL:http://www.favoritepoem.org/thevideos/kunitz.html)

Finally, another poem from the Favorite Poems Project, similar in theme to the Hopkins piece. This is God's World, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

...and really finally, just because I could not resist sharing it, is another short poem by Hopkins. Enjoy!

Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple color as a brindled cow;
For rosemoles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Fresh firecoal chestnut falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow and trim.

Glory be to God for dappled things
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
with swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him

Jay Dean