Gods Benevolence and indifference
... The first line of “God’s grandeur” states that “the world is charged by the grandeur of God.” The literal meaning of charged is to fill or furnish fully, but through connotation, Hopkins implies that God has touched the world with his grandness making it great. Because the world was touched with God’s grandness “it will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” Since foil is used to add color and brilliance it is a simile used to describe how nature’s form is a direct result of God’s Grandeur. Despite the apparent vastness of God’s creation people still don’t “reck his rod.” In other words they don’t give the reverence that is due him. In fact they sear his creation with their trade, and they smear and blear with toil. In saying that the world “is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod,” Hopkins feels that man has gone so far in his defiance against God that he doesn’t even realize his irreverence towards God. Emily Dickinson begins her poem by saying “apparently with no surprise to any happy flower.” She uses the direct meaning of “happy” to personify the flower by attributing to it the human emotion of happiness. Then the frost comes in and “beheads it at its play in accidental power.” The connotation of the word “beheaded” expresses the harshness and violence of the frost which has killed the flower but has done so ignorantly. Dickinson opens the next stanza with “the blond assassin passes on,” through the use of diction the word “assassin” conveys that the frost deliberately killed the flower while the use of the word “blond” maintains the frost’s innocence. This is a direct comparison to “God’s Grandeur” where the humans ignorantly harm God’s creation to the point that the creation “wear’s man’s smudge and shares mans smell.” Hopkins and Dickenson’s attitude contrast sharply between the views of a benevolent God and an indifferent God. In the first stanza of the poem “God’s Grandeur”, Hopkins uses the repetition of “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod” to show man’s continual abuse of God’s creation. Yet “for all this, nature is never spent” because “there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” The earth remains fresh despite human abuse because God sends his holy ghost to continually rejuvenate and recharge his creation. This ...