Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest and an Englishman.

And this poem was written in 1877, but it was published posthumously as was the case with most of his work

Hopkins is primarily known for a sort of innovation called sprung rhythm and I think you'll see

what that's all about as I read this poem. So I'm going to dive

right into it and then make a comment and then I'll read it one more time. This is God's

grandeur by Hopkins. 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 man then now not wreck 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,

O morning, at the brown brink eastward springs,

because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast

and with bright wings. So, as I said, Hopkins is known for

something called sprung rhythm. He described that as sort of the way it sounds that it springs or flows from the poet like plants

coming out of the soil i believe is the analogy that he used um and if you google this there's lots of

sites Wikipedia and you know schmoup and a lot of the other sites that just have basic background on a lot of poets and literature.

You can find a lot out about this idea if you are so interested.

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