THE DEAREST FRESHNESS DEEP DOWN THINGS

ROSES RYE NH
ROSE ARBOR BEHIND SOME HISTORICAL HOUSE
WITH LOVELY DESERTED GROUNDS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
 IN PORTSMOUTH, NH

I have been traveling and am feeling just a teensy bit drained as in I am going to Logan six hours early Friday to try to get on stand-by for the three flights back to LA before mine.

Yes! Eager to be back in my little sanctuary: my own bed, my own coffee-maker, my own birds.

Times like this I turn especially to the life force of trees and flowers.
Times like this I think especially of 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.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

WILD ROSE HIPS,
MISTY MORNING. OCEAN BOULEVARD,
RYE BEACH, NH


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