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78 of literature, it would seem; we must achieve originality—and often at the cost of so much complexity. Not a few of us, indeed, would appear to have been born complex, with a congenital impulse toward entangling an existence already difficult enough. But there is one ineradicable simplicity about religious men: they are always coming back upon God. To Him they reach out, and peradventure attain, through the mysteries of Nature, through the mazes of science and abstract speculation, even through the fundamental intricacies of their own temperament. His Spirit they perceive brooding above the patient earth, glorifying and illumining her travail. And so one finds Father Hopkins' ulti-mate message, clarion-clear, in this very direct and characteristic sonnet upon "God's Grandeur":

The vital and arresting quality of this little poem distinguishes all of Gerard Hopkins' religious poetry; and it is in his religious poetry, after all, that he attained most unequivocally.