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.
-- God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Photographer Justin Lee of British Columbia, Canada captured this beautiful rainbow shot of Bridalveil Fall at California’s Yosemite National Park. According to Daily Mail, he was “standing close to a cliff at the Tunnel View lookout” and took hundreds of photos of this stunning event. He is quoted as saying, “the sun has to be in position to get the rainbow, and this photo was not planned by me beforehand. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time…I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to see such a sight, and just had to start taking pictures straight away.” -- A Beautiful Rainbowed Waterfall at Yosemite National ParkPosted by gerardvanderleun at March 3, 2013 2:03 AM
Most meaningful poem of my life. And every time I ponder the latest environmental scare, the innate pessimism of the doomsayers is so clear to me. Don't they know---how have they not SEEN---that there lives the dearest freshness deep-down things?
This is my favorite Hopkins poem.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded 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;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
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.
The Excesses Of God
by Robinson Jeffers
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.
Dang it. Now my workday concentration is ruined. I have stood on the lip of that fall in the late afternoon sunlight. It's a rarely visited spot, there are no trails except what climbers know. I have climbed many of those walls. For the life of me I don't know why I don't rearrange my life to go there every weekend. I've hiked all over that area. Sometimes I curse this life of productive work, and pine for the carefree and happy days of youth in the mountains.
Some people do it, cast off life and become dirtbag climbers. I knew those guys, but couldn't do it myself. I had other dreams to chase.
Posted by: John A. Fleming at March 4, 2013 10:58 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
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