Glorious

My thesis is that Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem God’s Grandeur is about the positive and negative aspects of the relationship between humans and God, and that Hopkins uses the motif of nature to illustrate this relationship.

In the first paragraph of my Blog Post 2, I attempt to reveal the positive, uplifting sentiment given off by Hopkins’ description of God in the first tercet of his poem.  The author compares God’s greatness to the “shining of shook foil” (2). In the footnotes he goes on to explain that he “mean[s] foil in a sense of a leaf” and this leads me to automatically connect with nature. In fact, as I go on to explain, a whole scene emerges in my head thanks to that simple four-word phrase.

Later in the first paragraph I analyze another natural depiction that Hopkins uses to demonstrate the magnificence of God – “the ooze of oil Crushed” (3-4). In the footnotes once again an explanation is given for this particular word choice: “as when olives are crushed for their oil”. I do not think that the use of olives as a visual in a short poem about God is a coincidence. I go on to suggest the parallel of the olive branch in the Bible, implying the positive connotation of the plant can be representative of the positive illustration of God in these first four lines.

I find it fitting that the author compares God’s glory to nature, because God created nature, and in my opinion it is his most glorious creation. Then, when Hopkins transitions into the next four lines, and unmistakably becomes more negative, he is talking about generations of humans. God created humans as well, though I would not say we are remotely close to glorious.

In the second paragraph of my Blog Post 2 I analyze the critical portrayal Hopkins writes of humans and their impact on the earth. Instead of words like “foil” and “oil”, he uses “toil” and “soil”. Despite the rhyme one can clearly hear the unfavorable undertone of the second two. Soil, or dirt, is the ugliest of all things natural, and that is why Hopkins uses it to describe the impact of humans.