it would be like tongues of fire "flames out/like shining from shook foil." This redeemer shed His blood for the fallen man of which Hopkins is writing, it oozed out of his body when crushed "like the ooze of oil." When oil was used as part of the symbolic ritual of atonement during Biblical times, it was actually a type or symbol for Christ's blood. In His sacrifice Christ atoned for mankind's sin. The writer's distressed tone emphasizes his disbelief that even in the face of this greatness men still do not respect and fear God, "Why do men then now not reck his rod." Hopkins ends the octave on a note of disgust that even after this great sacrifice mankind could still be more interested in material wealth and destruction of creation for profit than having a spiritual nature: "all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil." Hopkin's uses images of a destroyed nature to not only paint a bleak picture of sin, but also to symbolically speak to the barren spiritual state of man. "And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: The soil/is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod." Man cannot feel a connection with God, through nature, because his fee
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