The World is Changed

God's Grandeur

The world is changed with the grandeur god.
It will flame out,
like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to agreatness,
like the ooze of oil crushed.
Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generation have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleard, smeared with toil;
And wears men's smudge and shares men's smell:
the soil is bare now, noor 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.

By Gerard Manley Hopkins