Blue of the Sky as ‘ Swarming and Blushing’: Celebration of Nature in G. M. Hopkins

Abstract

“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”.
G. M. Hopkins’ poem ‘God’s Grandeur’ opens with a very powerful metaphor expressing
the electrifying presence of God in the world. For the poet, Nature was the visible sign through
which he encountered God, the Creator. He found nature a means of sanctification and it
enabled him to render worship to God. While reading “God’s Grandeur”, one can almost feel the
explosion that is going to take place soon. This poem can be read along with another of
Hopkins’s poems, namely, ‘The Starlight Night’ which expresses the poet’s ecstasy and wonder
at the beauty of nature: “Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! / Look at all the fire-folk
sitting in the air!” Hopkins’s spiritual Father and the Founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius of
Loyola, was an avid star-gazer. Lying on his back in the open terrace of a building, Ignatius was
fond of looking at the stars and praising the Maker of them all. Hopkins seems to have been
following in the footsteps of his Founder in this respect, giving himself over, for a while, to the
sheer beauty and glory of the stars which appear to him as “the fire-folk sitting in the air!”