Gardening and Writing

Writing is often compared to gardening.  In both endeavors, one starts with something very small—an idea or a seed—nurtures it, cares for it, weeds around it, and hopes that it will grow and flourish.  As I began cleaning up my garden, today, I was reminded of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, especially the second stanza:

God’s Grandeur 

BY 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 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.

As I started to clean up the garden today, I spotted things starting to grow.