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. 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.
Hopkins Set
Song Cycle by Newel Kay Brown (b. 1932)
?. God's Grandeur  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "God's Grandeur", appears in Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse, first published 1895
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]?. Pied Beauty  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Glory be to God for dappled things -- For skies of couple-colour as a [brinded]1 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]2. [And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.]3 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: Praise him.
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "Pied Beauty", written 1877, appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FIN Finnish (Suomi) (Erkki Pullinen) , "Monimuotoista kauneutta", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 sometimes modernized to "brindled"
2 Mitchell: "trim"
2 omitted by Mitchell
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
?. The windhover  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bowbend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold vermillion.
Text Authorship:
- by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "The windhover", appears in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published 1918
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FIN Finnish (Suomi) (Erkki Pullinen) , "Tuulihaukka: Omistettu Herrallemme Kristukselle", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Total word count: 332