This "freshness" is probably meant to evoke and consequently to defy
the finality of the image of the wanton destruction of nature in Wisdom. The
word "freshness" is unique, being found nowhere in the Protestant
Bible. But in Wisdom, men, "thinking not aright" and believing their
lives to be short and mortal, say, "let us . . . use the freshness of
creation avidly . . . Let no meadow be free from our wantonness" (Wisd.
2.1-9). When interpreting the poem on the level of physical nature, we should
not underestimate "[t]he anguish that Hopkins . . . felt because industrial
man not only failed to respond to the forms of nature but in fact seemed
dedicated to their annihilation" (Bump 159). Hopkins wrote in one of his
journals: The ashtree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. It was
lopped first: I heard the sound and looking out and seeing it maimed there came
at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not see the inscapes of the
world destroyed any more. (Bump 159) Yet, despite the fact that man abuses
nature for his transitory pleasure, he does not have the power to destroy it
altogether, for there still "lives the dearest freshness deep down
things" (Hopkins 10). The "deep down" things signify not only the
rejuvenation of nature, but the rejuvenation of man through the presence of the
Holy Spirit. Christ?s death, while ransoming sinners, also made it possible
that the Holy Spirit might be sent into the world (John 16.7). The symbolic
dove, whose image we see in lines 13-14, expresses "the indwelling of the
Holy Ghost in creatures and above all in the souls of men" (Boyle 37). The
Spirit dwells within all believers, but It will also continue Its efforts to
bring unbelievers to repentance, for God is "not willing that any should
perish" (2 Pet. 3.9). And although Christ was crushed down, emotionally and
physically, He rose again, and He will also come again. "Only
seemingly," writes Ellis, "is God?s energy fallen, crushed, debased
in this world" (128). For, even "though the last lights off the black
West went / Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs" (Hopkins
11-12). Or, as 2 Samuel 23:4 prophesies, "he shall be as the light of the
morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass
springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain." Again, the vehicle
of the metaphor is nature, and its rejuvenation symbolizes Christ?s coming
into the world. This image of morning springing from darkness also draws our
attention to the words of Isaiah: "Then shall thy light break forth as the
morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily" (58.8). And again: I
will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that
they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things
straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. (Isaiah 42.16;
emphasis added) The continuing presence of the Holy Spirit is proof of this
promise. God continues to work through the Holy Ghost, who "over the bent /
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings" (Hopkins 13-14).
The bent (crooked) world has not been abandoned by God; it will be made
straight, for it has been conquered by Him, and it is still being protected by
Him. The bird imagery of line fourteen is drawn from the baptism of Jesus, when
"he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon
him" (Matt. 3.17; Boyle 38). This dove imagery, in turn, is meant to recall
Genesis, in which the Holy Spirit apparently broods over the world: "And
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (1.2; Boyle 38). The
wing imagery possess a variety of positive connotations. Wings are associated in
the Bible with God?s healing (Mal. 4.2), with His protection (Ruth 2.12; Ps.
17.8, 26.7, 57.1, 61.4, 63.7, 91.4; Matt. 23.37), with the strength that He
imparts to man (Isa. 40.31; Exod. 19.4), and with His conquest. This last
association, though not the most obvious, is perhaps the most crucial. When God
is said to "spread His wings over" a city, it means He has conquered
it (Jer. 48.40). At the end of "God?s Grandeur," God, in the person
of the Holy Spirit, has spread His "bright wings" over the "bent
world," implying that He is not only protecting, healing, and strengthening
it, but that, despite the seeming triumph of darkness, He has already conquered
the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was crushed
like an olive for this very purpose. The world remains charged with the grandeur
of God, "in spite of all mankind has done and is doing to pollute and
pervert and tread out its radiance" (Ellis 129). God, through the constant
presence of His Holy Spirit, continues to rejuvenate physical nature as well as
the human spirit; both are "being made over anew" (Wisd. 19.6). So,
however dark and dreary this world may appear (and does appear in lines five
through eight of the poem), we must not surrender hope. For as Christ exhorted,
"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have
overcome the world" (John 16.33).
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