Final Draft

As the landscape outside my window is constantly moving, I wonder if the wind blowing, tree dancing, even the dirt swirling around has a part of God in them. It is a mystery if God runs with the wind or just watches over these little things in life such as dirt and trees. This led me to question if Mother Nature is a work of God or is Mother Nature a separate design altogether? In “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins and “Design” by Robert Frost, both poems explicitly use the texture and aspect of nature to conclude whether God’s essence lies within nature or is Mother Nature a God of herself?

As each culture believes in their respective Gods, Gods can represent an animal figure, human figure, or even an object figure. However, the best known definition of God is that God is a great being of force that manifested life in this world. Being that God is this great being who can basically control life, anything that God represent must give out a sensation of greatness and strength. Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur,” decides to portray the strength and greatness of God with the description electricity and thunder such as “charged,” “flame,” and” rod”; thunder is a nature-based element that means is widely used everywhere to represent greatness and strength. In order to persuade readers that a connection lies between God and Mother Nature, Hopkins uses nature-base terms to describe what and who God is. Doing this not only shows a connection to nature, but shows that nature is where God’s essence also lies.

However, instead of using nature-base terms to describe the strength of God, Robert Frost’s method is portraying the essence of God as little as possible. The only portrayal of the essence of God that Frost used is that he questions the existence of God in Mother Nature near the end of “Design,” this is where Frost mentions God as a design and that whether such a design could and would govern such things like the spider, moth and flower. This method barely makes the essence of God apparent but still faint enough to know that Frost is mentioning God. By barely mentioning the God or the essence of God in the poem, Frost did this purposely to encourage how God’s duty has a limit his or her duty.

The way Hopkins chooses words that describe God in the fourth line of “God’s Grandeur,” “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” one would think that the world is God’s duty to protect and govern, but “charged” can also mean to energize. What is the meaning of this word “charged?” Does he mean that God is what makes the world go round? I believe that this is exactly what Hopkins is trying to say. The poem suggests that God is everywhere; he protects and energizes the world to allow us to continue to live and evolve. Other words that express the same meanings as “charged” are “flame” and “rod.” These words are also used to describe God as someone of greatness and richness, as previously mentioned. Such greatness is further described God as the “Holy Ghost” that will protect the world like a hen with its warm breast and bright wings. The metaphor of the hen protecting its egg under its breast and wings suggests that God will protect the world through every obstacles, plants, animals and humans alike. Hopkins’ poem not only suggests that God watches over humans, but God also watches over nature which can imply that nature is God’s design.

Frost’s poem proceeds in a different direction than Hopkins; Frost uses the horror side of nature instead of using nature to portray the strength of God. As the poem starts out, there is an image of a dimpled, fat and white spider that is like a baby who is fat, white with big dimples. The spider then hides itself in the white heal-all flower while waiting for a meal. The moth believes the white heal-all to be a safe place then fly over only to be capture by the spider. As we picture these images, the images are wrong and upside-down. The heal-all flower is said to be white, but heal-alls are usually blue in real life. The spider is portraying as an innocent baby but the spider turned out to be a “witch” that eats the moth like a “broth.” Spiders are usually associated with darkness, witch-related and spider-webs, but the word “white” forces the reader to picture the spider as a pure and innocent being. Even though the spider and heal-all are portray as innocent and pure, they are described as “death,” “froth,” and “blight” later on in the poem. These upside-down images that Frost describes, shows the terrifying side and trickery of nature. Frost questions such a horror design for nature, “What but design of darkness to appall?” Frost wants to show that God is a being of greatness and purity, he cannot make such a terrifying design in the nature world, and nevertheless could a design govern such small beings.

Hopkins and Frost both use nature as the focus point to conclude the existence of God in nature. While Hopkins believes that God is Mother Nature who watches over the world as he describes God as thunder and a hen which watches over its “egg” under its breast and wings as if God is nurturing the world. Frost believes that the terrifying design of nature is what makes him believe that God and Mother Nature are two different entities.