In the world of "God’s Grandeur" everything is shifting and changing and moving. For better or worse, the potential for change runs through Gerard Manley Hopkins’s verse. The speaker’s vision is at once apocalyptic and full of bursting green life, as he or she both laments change and yearns for it.
Questions About Transformation
- According to the poem, how has industrialization changed human beings? Do you agree with the speaker’s analysis?
- How has the earth been changed by industrialization, according to the first stanza? Do you agree with the speaker’s analysis?
- Does the speaker seem to undergo a transformation by the end of the poem? If so, what changes? If not, how does the speaker remain consistent throughout the poem?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
The speaker sees the power of nature to transform itself as greater than the power of humans to transform nature.