Pottering about in Cornwall

Cornwall has been particularly beautiful this week and although we spend much time in St Ives we have been pottering about here and there in this beautiful county.

Not far from my mind are the pitiful happenings in America in the Gulf of Mexico and this poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to fit my thoughts.

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 bears 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 from the black west went,

Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast, and with, ah, bright wings.

Guide to photos below

From the top: five minutes drive from my home is Portreath and the beach and below the fields around my village of Illogan.

Below is Porthtowan Cliffs about three miles from my home and the second photo below is an aerial view of Porthtowan beach