Ah! Bright Wings

I've returned from Gerroa, and I come bearing gifts. Our house there really is located right on that 7 Mile Beach that I mentioned before we left. And we had some beautiful, beautiful days. At the same time, it was amazing to me how the same beach could look so different at different times. So I thought I'd show some pictures, along with a poem by 19th century British Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins.

God's Grandeur

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.