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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.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

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More quotes by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I think that the trivialness of life is, and personally to each one, ought to be seen to be, done away with by the Incarnation.

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.

Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

All Gerard Manley Hopkins quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gerard Manley Hopkins (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.