A Hopeful Season

As I was looking for a quote to use in our Christmas card this year, I remembered a line a good friend of mine used in her card several years ago. She handwrote in each of her cards these words: "and with ah! bright wings." The line seemed familiar (I must have paid more attention in my Romantic and Victorian literature class than I realized), and it sent me searching for the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem where I thought I'd find it. It's from "God's Grandeur," and the line captures so well the comfort, hope, and peace the holiday season should bring.

So I thought I'd copy the Hopkins poem here as an early-in-the-season reminder to launch into it at a pace that allows you to appreciate and take comfort in its hope-filled purpose. Enjoy. (The "bright wings" bit comes at the end.)

B.

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.