God’s Grandeur - Gerard Manly Hopkins

 God’s Grandeur

           - Gerard Manly Hopkins

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.

What is the central idea of the poem “God’s Grandeur”?

Answer. The poem God’s Grandeur composed by GM Hopkins revolves around the idea that human beings have been rendered incapable of perceiving the natural world energized with the magnificence of the God due to their preoccupation with trade and commerce. Hever, things are still fresh at the core and the nature continues to infinity due to the grace of God.

The poem tells that the grace of God is coming to us like an electric current, invisible but present. The magnificence of God gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil as the mustard seeds are crushed.

Question. What do the words seared, bleared and smeared suggest in the poem “God’s Grandeur”?

Answer. Seared in the poem God’s Grandeur” refers to burning of something like body parts for skin that leaves a scar effecting with the sense of sight, taste or touch. It damages a person’s ability to interact with the outside world.

Smearing and blearing carry the sense of dirty smudge drawn across the previously clear surface. Such as eyes or lens of glasses. It also distorts the image we get in the lens.

Taken together all these three words imply that something beautiful has been damaged and the sense of perception has been compromised. These words explain why human beings cannot perceive the God’s Grandeur.