Two Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

From Poets.org about Hopkins style In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to Burns, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning.

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;         5   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;         10 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.

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;         5     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 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:         10                   Praise him.