Nature Notes--'The World is Charged'--a Regal Sunset at Fort Pickens

Just before sunset on All Saints' Day, I found these monarchs, Danaus plexippus, settling in for the evening on a tree at Fort Pickens. They must have been taking a breather while enroute to Mexico. I wonder if they had to recalibrate for the coming calamity.

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.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877--

*******************************************

Please visit Ramblingwoods.com for more Nature Notes posts this week.