Thursday, September 08, 2016

Man’s Mindset vs. God Grandeur

A riff on, but no apologies to, Gerard Manley Hopkins


MAN’S MINDSET

The world is charged with the mindset of man
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do we then now not think our plan?
Generations have gone, have gone, have gone;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wear’s man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is hard now, as foot can feel, worn to bone.

And in all this, nature is badly spent;
            There lies the dearest drearness deep down things;
And as the last lights of the black West went
            No morning at the brown brink eastward springs —
Spiritus Mundi flees from the rent

            World, pale with dead mist; no comfort it brings.