God’s Grandeur

The Oxbow. The Connecticut River near Northampton. Thomas Cole. 1836.

 

God’s Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins,

 

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 tod;

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.

 

A Fine Picture—While other painters of the Hudson River School would merge the two in Romantic scenes, Thomas Cole chose in this painting to make clear the dichotomy between wilderness and cultivation.

Long after the painting was completed, Matthew Baigell identified the logging scars on the distant hill as Hebrew letters. Viewed upright they seem to spell the name “Noah”; viewed upside down, as though from God’s perspective, the word shaddai, “the Almighty,” is formed.

A tiny self-portrait of Thomas Cole with his easel can be spotted on the rocks in the foreground.

The painting is an entry submitted by Fiona of Vista Court.

2 thoughts on “God’s Grandeur”

  1. I love this painting for the amazing symbolism embedded into it. Not only do the Hebrew letters speak to one, but to the left a storm seems to be withdrawing from the glory of God. Bravo, Thomas Cole!

    1. Thank you, Fiona, for your submission of Cole’s beautiful and symbolic painting. The rainstorm is particularly significant when one recognizes Cole’s reference to Noah.

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