ANALYSIS: FORM AND METER OF GOD’S GRANDEUR

Italian Sonnet, Sprung Rhythm

God’s Grandeur follows the basic form of an Italian sonnet. An Italian sonnet
has fourteen lines, eight in the first section (called the "octave"), and six lines
in the second section (called the "sestet"). Traditionally the octave and the
sestet are not separated into separate stanza’s like here. Hopkins’ division
emphasizes the contrast between the first and second stanza. 

The poem does follow the rhyme scheme of the tradition Italian sonnet, that is
ABBAABBA and then CDCDCD. In the first stanza, the first, fourth, fifth and
eighth lines rhyme with each other, and the second, third, sixth and seventh
lines rhyme with each other. In the second stanza, the ninth, eleventh, and
thirteenth lines rhyme with each other, and the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth
lines rhyme with each other. 

That’s just the surface of Hopkins’s rhyme scheme. There is rhyming going on
inside the poem too. End rhymes "God," "rod" and "shod" also rhyme with the
repeated "trod" of line five. You could analyze this complex relationship for a
unique paper. How might this relate the painful internal rhyme of "seared"
bleared" and "smeared" of line six?

Other than the third line (which has twelve syllables), each line has ten
syllables. Yet, its meter is not what is often found in iambic pentameter. (In
iambic pentameter a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable or
vice-versa.) Instead, Hopkins uses what he calls "sprung rhythm," his big
claim to fame. (See "Calling Card" for more.)

In sprung rhythm, this relationship between stressed and unstressed syllables

have more complicated relationships. For Hopkins, this means that whether or
not a syllable is stressed or unstressed is guided by the desire to express the
distinctive "whatness" (as Hopkins called it) of each thing. 

"Shining from shook foil" is a great example. The syllables we stress

naturally when speaking are in bold. This rhythm surprises us, even after
repeated readings, in the way it makes us use our breath, and in the way it
speeds us up or slows us down. 

The result of this fusion of tradition and innovation is an ordered disorder.

Gerard Manley Hopkins uses the traditional sonnet as a playground for his
experiment, where hope and despair often combine in a single word or image,
and everything seems both incredibly mysterious, but also surprisingly clear.

 Our speaker is anonymous and genderless, and talks like no one else. He or
she seems to be in deep turmoil. On the one hand, the speaker is conflicted over
how the world could be so "bent" and broken, suffering under the strains of
industry, when it is a place intimately connected to God. On the other hand, the
speaker is sure that God is a benevolent force, suffering under the strain of the
poor choices humans have made. If you think that it seems like the speaker isn’t
sure where God stops and God’s creations begin, you aren’t alone. Hopkins was
criticized for not representing more of a separation between the earth and God.
Speaker
The speaker also seems pretty isolated from other people, especially in lines 4-8.
In lines 7-8, the speaker verges on misanthropy. (A misanthrope is person who
has lost trust in other humans, and who instead takes the role of harsh judge.) Of
course, since any misanthrope is also a human, such judgments are also
turned inward. We can assume the speaker is very hard on him or herself. The
speaker is very frustrated, and doesn’t understand why the people can’t see the
world they way he or she sees it. According to the speaker, the world should be
viewed as something lovely, and as a connection to God.

In the second stanza the speaker becomes a seducer, tempting any reader or
listener with a stunning vision of the natural world, and then a reassurance that all
is not lost. 

Because of the anonymous nature of the speaker, we can use our imaginations.
We can play around with gender all we want, and the poem is only slightly
impacted. Perhaps the speaker is a woman, who blames men for the world’s
problems. Maybe it’s a young man, riding through a desolate city. Or a person
sitting on a blanket at Woodstock. Or a subsistence farmer. Or someone at an
environmental rally or protest

Where It All Goes Down (setting)

The physical setting of "God’s Grandeur" is our planet, Earth. Though the
poem was written in 1877, the images are easily transferable to today.

In the poem, the earth has a problem. Humans, in their struggle, have been
mucking it up, caring more about money than preserving and protecting the
planet. In the first stanza we see big factories, smoke stacks, and polluted
waters and lands. In short, the first few lines present us with a barely
inhabitable planet.

But then the poem moves underground, and shows us nature in hiding, full of
potential, waiting to show its face again on the earth’s surface. 

After that the setting is all sky – sunrise, sunset, the cloudlike image of the
Holy Ghost as a dove, hovering over the planet.
On the other hand, literary analysis can be a labor of love. It is for me. When a work
grabs me I want to know why. Don’t misunderstand. I enjoy it first, but there’s
something in me that wants to figure it out and when I do, I often discover other
wonders that make me like it even more. That’s my hope here. If you find that close
analysis of poetry ruins the experience for you, I give you permission to skip my
commentary and just enjoy the poem. Here it is:

The Grandeur of God

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 bears 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.
FORM

This is a sonnet. As I learned from Richard Foster in his book  How to Read
Literature Like a Professor, you can usually spot a sonnet by its square shape. A
sonnet is a rather rigid form and, as a result, a difficult form. Fourteen lines of
iambic pentameter (accent on every other syllable, five stressed syllables per line).
In this case, a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, composed of two parts: an octave (8
lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines). The rhyme scheme for the octave is the
traditional a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a. The sestet rhymes in the pattern c-d-c-d-c-d.

If you doubt that writing a sonnet is difficult, try it yourself. Even excellent writers
find it challenging to communicate something meaningful, much less something
profound and beautiful, within these strict parameters.

RHYTHM

Hopkins holds only loosely to iambic pentameter here. He throws off the rhythm in
various places and adds an extra syllable to a line here and there. It’s not possible
to read this in a sing-song style. It’s more conversational than musical.

Another thing that throws off the rhythm (and makes it hard to spot the rhyme) is the
technique of enjambment, which is where the poet continues a clause or sentence
from one line to the next. We are more used to end-stopping, where a thought is
completed by the end of each line. Hopkins often ends his thoughts mid-line. This is
why it would be difficult to discern where lines begin and end if we only hear the
poem read aloud.

Notice how the repetition of “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod” forces the
reader to slow down. That line ingeniously reads with a cadence that imitates the
tread of feet. Awesome, right?

RHYME

The end rhyme (rhyming of the last words in the lines) is strictly according to sonnet
form (God, oil, foil, rod, trod, toil, soil, shod, spent, things, went, springs, bent,
wings), but because of the enjambment, we almost don’t notice them. We do,
however, notice the various internal rhymes Hopkins sprinkles
throughout: men/then, seared/bleared/smeared, wears/bears.

ALLITERATION

Hopkin’s play with the sound of words is most striking in his penchant for alliteration
— the repetition of beginning consonant sounds. They are abundant in these mere
14 lines: grandeur of God; shining from shook; gathers to a greatness; reck his rod;
seared with trade…smeared with toil; smeared…smudge…smell; foot feel;
dearest…deep down; last lights; west went; brown brink;

Notice the masterful alternating of b’s and w’s in the last line:

…over the bent/world broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.

WR ITE AT HO ME : W E T EA CH W RI TIN G F OR Y OU !

OTHER STUFF

Perhaps my favorite part of the poem is the rhetorical question in line 4: “Why do
men then now not reck his rod?’

Nine one-syllable words that roll off the tongue. Say it out loud. Seriously; you know
you want to. Say it again. And again. See what I mean? I love the repeating n’s in
“men then now not.” I love the rhyme of men/then, the implied paradox of then
nowand the final alliteration of reck/rod. I’ll never write a line that good in my entire
life!

By the way, reck means “to give heed to” and God’s rod is a symbol for his authority
or rule. Hopkins is wondering why, given the glory of God so powerfully displayed in
nature, men do not more readily bend their knee to Him. Hopkins, by the way, was a
priest as well as a poet.

MORE? TOO MUCH?

Oh, there’s plenty more: interjections like Oh! and ah!, the imagery of shook foil,
oozing oil, and brooding with bright wings. But I’ll stop there — leave you with
something to think about yourself.

So, how was that? Too much jargon? Too fine a dissection? Or did it help you see
this wonderful poem from new perspectives? After reading this, do you like the
poem more or less?

Analysis of God's Grandeur

God's Grandeur is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, being split into an octave (8 lines) and a
sestet (6 lines). The octave and sestet are end rhymed and the rhyme scheme is: abbaabba
cdcdcd.

Traditionally the octave is a proposal or introduction, of an argument or idea, and the sestet
then becomes the development of, or conclusion to, the octave. This shift in sense is known
as the turn or volta (in Italian).

 Hopkins sticks to these traditions of rhyme and form, but where he differs is in his
choice of language, subject and metre (meter in USA).
Subject

Sonnets are usually all about love and romance and relationships between people, lovers and
so forth. God's Grandeur focuses on the handiwork of God, the natural phenomena he
inherently resides within, and the contrasting negative influences of man.
Language/Diction

As you read through, make a mental note of words like charged and flame out,related to

electricity and the element of fire respectively. What about shining from shook foil and ooze of
oil/Crushed - both short and long vowels used to enhance the image of brilliance and
smoothness, whilst the consonants echo.

The contrast between positive and negative language is stark. Just

consider reck/trod/seared/bleared/smeared/toil/smudge/smell/bare....in the octave, reflecting
man's destructive influence on the world.

Then take charged/grandeur/flame out/ greatness/never spent/dearest freshness/with warm

breast/bright wings...from both octave and sestet, implying that God and nature work well
together.

Metre (Meter)

Hopkins is well known for experimenting with his metrical systems. He preferred to mix things
up and not stick to the regular daDUM x5 beat of the iambic pentameter. God's Grandeur is
packed with deviations, such as the spondaic shook foil of line 3 and Crushed.Why of line 4.

Note the 12 syllables of line three, adding two to the usual ten syllables per line to reflect the
effect of the oil.

An unusual repeated iambic beat occurs in line 5 where have trod, have trod, have
trod enhances the idea of many feet plodding.

Further Line by Line Analysis of God's Grandeur

Lines 1 - 4

The title word grandeur, from the French, means greatness, grandness, and it occurs in the
opening ten syllable line, the speaker declaring that the world is electrified by this impressive
divinely given impulse.

Hopkins, always a finely tuned poet in his choice of words, deliberately uses chargedto bring
an instant surge of positive energy into the reader's mind. Images of lightning flashes across
a skyscape, of sparks being created, of invisible oomph coursing through everything,
everywhere.

Note the mild alliteration too - world/with and grandeur/God - in a line that is end stopped for
emphasis.

The second line now consolidates this opening statement by introducing yet more vivid
imagery, enhancing the idea of electricity, power, heat and force. But, Hopkins being Hopkins,
he takes the reader deep into the image with a brilliant specific detail. This is no ordinary
flame but one that resembles foil when it is shaken.

Hopkins himself wrote in a letter:

'I mean foil in its sense of leaf or tinsel, and no other word whatever will give the effect I want.
Shaken gold-foil gives off broad glares like sheet lightning and also, and this is true of nothing
else, owing to its zigzag dints and crossings and network of small many cornered facets, a
sort of fork lightning too.'

Spondee and iamb, together with a caesura (pause because of the comma), contribute to the
altered rhythm. Assonance and alliteration are again in evidence
- shining/shook and shook/foil, adding to the texture.

Line three continues with a second example. Not only is there a flame bursting out, there is a
gathering, a liquified magnificence, as when say fruits or vegetables are crushed for their oil.

 This is a twelve syllable line, to take in the spread of the oil, extending the beat which
is counterpoint to the set iambic tradition. The sounds stretch and roll around the mouth
and not only that, enjambment takes the reader into the fourth line, where the single
word Crushed is suddenly end-stopped.
This abrupt punctuation causes the reader to brake before entering the sonnet's mini turn in
the form of the one and only question, concerning the attitude of man towards God. Single
syllables are stark reminders of this puzzling situation - man ignores the awesome energy of
God.

The term reck his rod means to not take care of, or not pay heed to, (reckless) God's
instrument of power, something like a lightning rod.

Lines 5 - 8

The next four lines are in some ways an answer to the question. Men (humans) pay no
attention to God's grandeur because they've become creatures of commerce and destruction.

Line five is most unusual. Full of iambs, it repeats the have trod to reinforce the idea of
mankind treading all over the earth, ruining it as they go about their business.

Line six continues the theme of nature being despoiled by the behaviour of humans. Note the
three words seared/bleared/smeared, all negative, reflecting the damage done through
industry and the race for profit.

The obvious interconnectedness of internal rhyme, the mixed rhythm at odds with the regular
iambic beat, create an ebb and flow that disrupts, leaving the reader uncertain as to where
the next line will take them.

Line seven reinforces line six - anaphora is used, repeated use of words (And) - humans
cannot help but stain and mark out their territories, - iambic beats returning, alliteration very
strong smudge/shares/smell/soil as enjambment once again continues the sense into line
eight.

Line eight reaffirms that once industrialised humans have got their hold on nature, not much
good can come out of the earth. The soil is bare and the many feet that have trammeled have
no feeling left - they're shod, like horses are shod.

So, the speaker has given the reader a clear picture of the world. God's great positive energy
flows throughout, energising, invigorating, whilst humankind is busy polluting and
undermining.
More Analysis Line by Line
Lines 9 - 14

The sestet brings a different approach, a conclusion to what has gone before in the octave.
Despite all of humankind's efforts to ruin the natural world, it, nature through God, resists and
refreshes itself.

Line nine is perhaps the most straightforward in the whole sonnet - no matter what man
throws at nature, it is never completely smashed; it comes back, it always returns. Ten
syllables, iambs, no messing. Note that Hopkins alliterates again - nature/never. He can't help
it.

Line ten is perhaps one of the most well known. It contains the mysterious yet
intriguing dearest freshness deep down things an alliterative phrase that is a delight to read
and complex to ponder on.

Invisible to the naked eye, this dearest freshness is a spiritual energy that today gets the
ecologists, religionists and environmental people excited - it is present in all things and
especially apparent when each new day dawns, as lines eleven and twelve suggest.

Line twelve with spondees and astute use of punctuation, is poised beautifully.

As the sun rises, the speaker acknowledges the presence of the christian Holy Ghost, the
active force of God, without flesh or known body, third member of the Godhead.

Lines thirteen and fourteen detail this final image, that of a bird-like entity protecting and
warming the nest (and nestlings) that is the earth.

The last line is typical Hopkins -

alliteration world/with/warm/wings and broods/breast/bright providing a wealth of sound
carried on varied sprung rhythm. Earth's renewal is guaranteed and no amount of smudge
and smell can thwart this mystical process.

Commentary

Mystical poets, like saints, are in the world but not of it. Hopkins' "God's Grandeur"
demonstrates that this poet used his craft as a means of relating to the Divine.

Petrarchan Sonnet

Gerard Manley Hopkins' motivation to imitate God prompts him to craft his poems in forms, as
Spirit does. Hopkins usually employs the sonnet form. "God's Grandeur" is a sonnet—
fourteen lines, more similar to the Petrarchan than the Elizabethan The first eight lines
(octave) present a issue; then, the remaining six lines (sestet) address that issue.

Hopkins' rime scheme is typically ABBAABBA CDCDCD, which also resembles the
Petrarchan rime scheme in the octave. Hopkins employs iambic pentameter but varies from
spondee to trochee. Father Hopkins' called his unique form "sprung rhythm."

(Please note: The spelling, "rhyme," was introduced into English by Dr. Samuel Johnson
through an etymological error. For my explanation for using only the original form, please see
"Rime vs Rhyme: An Unfortunate Error.")
The Octave: Pantheistic View of God

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.

The speaker in this Petrarchan sonnet sees God everywhere: "The world is charged with the
grandeur of God." His soul is convinced, but his senses tell him that people do not behave as
if this were true: "Why do men then not reck his rod?"

Not only do men not heed the Divine, they also seem content to exist in darkness from where
they spread gloom on the environment: "Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; / And all
is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wears mans smudge and shares mans
smell. Hopkins sees that people are more interested in materialistic gain and possessions
than in celebrating the glory of a loving, merciful, heavenly Father.

The Sestet: God's Gifts Cannot Be Exhausted

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.

As the octave has presented the problem: mankind is oblivious to God's gift and thus defiles
them, the sestet addresses the issue: despite indifference to the Creator, humankind cannot
exhaust the gifts that Creator bestows, "nature is never spent." Mankind cannot spoil the
Lord's precious gifts, because "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.
Everything renews; man may disregard God's grandeur, but the sun will rise tomorrow. If the
sun goes out, what bright, more glorious orb may this God offer to place in its stead!

The speaker's faith leaves him no room for doubt, when "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? The Holy Ghost will ever mother humanity—Her little birds.
Hopkins' mystical insight brings him faith; it throbs in his soul—in his "inscape," his unique
term for his inner landscape.

Mystical Poets and God's Creation

And "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"
(KJV, John 1:1). This line roars in the inner ears of mystical poets. A poet is a word
craftsman, and when the poet builds with words, he is imitating God, which takes the reader
out of dogma and into true spirituality. The form of "God's Grandeur" closely resembles
Hopkins' other poems. In "The Windhover," the rime scheme is exactly like that of "God's
Grandeur."
The same is true for "The Lantern out of Doors," "Hurrahing in Harvest," and "As Kingfishers
Catch Fire." His sonnets celebrate God and continue the search for a deeper relationship with
the Mastercraftsman. Occasionally, as Hopkins structures his sonnets, they produce an order
that further marks a style uniquely his own.

Readers do not encounter any structure resembling, "Stirred for a birds, the achieve of, the
mastery of the thing," in a Hardy or a Housman poem. Also, a typical line of Hopkins is "Let
him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east," which
contains the example of his meter and content.

Divine Melancholy

The melancholy experienced by Hopkins is of divine origin. The ameliorist in Hardy produces
in his poems a different sort of melancholy. Hopkins has faith; Hardy has hope. One may
deem Hardy spiritually adrift on the sea of man's woe, even when he sings, "I talk as if the
things were born / With sense to work its mind; / Yet it is but one mask of many worn / By the
Great Face behind."

Referring to the veiled nature of God, Hardy seems to bemoan it rather than celebrate it, as
Hopkins does. Housman is preoccupied with endings. He says, "And since to look at things in
bloom / Fifty springs are little room" and "sharp the link of life will snap."

Of course, all poets are concerned with endings, but each poet in his work will treat those
concerns in distinctive ways. While Hardy and Housman and most poets remain earthbound
looking for answers to ultimate questions among the various outlets for human intelligence, in
Hopkins' "Gods Grandeur," the reader hears singing loud and sweet a poet's song of the love
of the Divine.

Summary
The first four lines of the octave (the first eight-line stanza of an
Italian sonnet) describe a natural world through which God’s
presence runs like an electrical current, becoming momentarily
visible in flashes like the refracted glintings of light produced by metal
foil when rumpled or quickly moved. Alternatively, God’s presence is
a rich oil, a kind of sap that wells up “to a greatness” when tapped
with a certain kind of patient pressure. Given these clear, strong
proofs of God’s presence in the world, the poet asks how it is that
humans fail to heed (“reck”) His divine authority (“his rod”).
The second quatrain within the octave describes the state of
contemporary human life—the blind repetitiveness of human labor,
and the sordidness and stain of “toil” and “trade.” The landscape in its
natural state reflects God as its creator; but industry and the
prioritization of the economic over the spiritual have transformed the
landscape, and robbed humans of their sensitivity to the those few
beauties of nature still left. The shoes people wear sever the physical
connection between our feet and the earth they walk on, symbolizing
an ever-increasing spiritual alienation from nature.
The sestet (the final six lines of the sonnet, enacting a turn or shift in
argument) asserts that, in spite of the fallenness of Hopkins’s
contemporary Victorian world, nature does not cease offering up its
spiritual indices. Permeating the world is a deep “freshness” that
testifies to the continual renewing power of God’s creation. This
power of renewal is seen in the way morning always waits on the
other side of dark night. The source of this constant regeneration is
the grace of a God who “broods” over a seemingly lifeless world with
the patient nurture of a mother hen. This final image is one of God
guarding the potential of the world and containing within Himself the
power and promise of rebirth. With the final exclamation (“ah! bright
wings”) Hopkins suggests both an awed intuition of the beauty of
God’s grace, and the joyful suddenness of a hatchling bird emerging
out of God’s loving incubation.
Form
This poem is an Italian sonnet—it contains fourteen lines divided into
an octave and a sestet, which are separated by a shift in the
argumentative direction of the poem. The meter here is not the
“sprung rhythm” for which Hopkins is so famous, but it does vary
somewhat from the iambic pentameter lines of the conventional
sonnet. For example, Hopkins follows stressed syllable with stressed
syllable in the fourth line of the poem, bolstering the urgency of his
question: “Why do men then now not reck his rod?” Similarly, in the
next line, the heavy, falling rhythm of “have trod, have trod, have
trod,” coming after the quick lilt of “generations,” recreates the sound
of plodding footsteps in striking onomatopoeia.
Commentary
The poem begins with the surprising metaphor of God’s grandeur as an
electric force. The figure suggests an undercurrent that is not always seen,
but which builds up a tension or pressure that occasionally flashes out in ways
that can be both brilliant and dangerous. The optical effect of “shook foil” is
one example of this brilliancy. The image of the oil being pressed out of an
olive represents another kind of richness, where saturation and built-up
pressure eventually culminate in a salubrious overflow. The image of
electricity makes a subtle return in the fourth line, where the “rod” of God’s
punishing power calls to mind the lightning rod in which excess electricity in
the atmosphere will occasionally “flame out.” Hopkins carefully chooses this
complex of images to link the secular and scientific to mystery, divinity, and
religious tradition. Electricity was an area of much scientific interest during
Hopkins’s day, and is an example of a phenomenon that had long been taken
as an indication of divine power but which was now explained in naturalistic,
rational terms. Hopkins is defiantly affirmative in his assertion that God’s work
is still to be seen in nature, if men will only concern themselves to look.
Refusing to ignore the discoveries of modern science, he takes them as
further evidence of God’s grandeur rather than a challenge to it. Hopkins’s
awe at the optical effects of a piece of foil attributes revelatory power to a
man-made object; gold-leaf foil had also been used in recent influential
scientific experiments. The olive oil, on the other hand, is an ancient
sacramental substance, used for centuries for food, medicine, lamplight, and
religious purposes. This oil thus traditionally appears in all aspects of life,
much as God suffuses all branches of the created universe. Moreover, the
slowness of its oozing contrasts with the quick electric flash; the method of its
extraction implies such spiritual qualities as patience and faith. (By including
this description Hopkins may have been implicitly criticizing the violence and
rapaciousness with which his contemporaries drilled petroleum oil to fuel
industry.) Thus both the images of the foil and the olive oil bespeak an all-
permeating divine presence that reveals itself in intermittent flashes or
droplets of brilliance.
Hopkins’s question in the fourth line focuses his readers on the present
historical moment; in considering why men are no longer God-fearing, the
emphasis is on “now.” The answer is a complex one. The second quatrain
contains an indictment of the way a culture’s neglect of God translates into a
neglect of the environment. But it also suggests that the abuses of previous
generations are partly to blame; they have soiled and “seared” our world,
further hindering our ability to access the holy. Yet the sestet affirms that, in
spite of the interdependent deterioration of human beings and the earth, God
has not withdrawn from either. He possesses an infinite power of renewal, to
which the regenerative natural cycles testify. The poem reflects Hopkins’s
conviction that the physical world is like a book written by God, in which the
attentive person can always detect signs of a benevolent authorship, and
which can help mediate human beings’ contemplation of this Author.