Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest of the nineteenth century, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him as one of the Victorian era's finest authors. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a poet whose use of imagery and his manipulation of prosody, notably his invention of sprung rhythm, established him post death as an innovative writer of verse, as did his method of glorifying God via vivid use of imagery and nature. Nature and religion were the two fundamental subjects that dominated the majority of his poems. The present text is the first edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poetry (1918), meticulously organized and edited by Robert Bridges (1844-1930), whose collection of Hopkins's poetic works is widely acknowledged as a significant and influential addition to the realm of English literature. Sneak Peek God's Grandeur 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; 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.