Silent Reading

  If you've ever taught a child to read, you recognize that point of fluency, when it's not a struggle any longer. The child will sit perfectly still, eyes flickering over the page, lips motionless. Not a twitch, not a sigh. Reading silently is what adults do. We don't whisper to ourselves, or mumble, or stop and re-read a line. But sometimes we should.
  One of my favorite poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins and he should never, never be read silently.
(Unless you're on public transportation and would scare the other passengers. Then you may read silently. But slowly.)
 
 So, try it out. Read it once, to yourself and then out loud. Savor the words, let them rest a bit on your tongue before heading out into the world. I promise you, the poem will live in a way it didn't when you were silent.
 
 God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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;	5
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;	10
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.