"Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things...."

I follow a lot of posts and blogs by knitting designers because I am interested in what they are doing and where they get their design inspiration. Today a very famous designer and teacher, Cat Bordhi posted and I realized that she had named her blog site - "Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things."

Well, this phrase rang a bell. I couldn't place it at first. Then I realized that it was a line of poetry from a poem....by....at first I thought Dylan Thomas and then it clicked - Gerard Manley Hopkins.  He is one of my favourites. It is also from one of my favourite poems - God's Grandeur.  Here is the poem.

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;	5
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;	10
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. And here are my photo takes on the poem - "dearest freshness deep down things" - Burke's Creek Ravine

and "morning, at the brown brink, eastward - springs"

Thank you Cat for this reminder. I love having an excuse to pause in the day and think about things that are truly grand.

Have a wonderful day!!!