There’s a palpable, breathable melancholy about Lagos Island. It is a wild and claustrophobic place. It is beautiful, quiet, and noisy. Sparse, congested, and industrial. Ugly, fascinating, and begging-to-be-photographed. I took some pictures and captioned them with lines from one of my favourite Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems, God’s Grandeur. 

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“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
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“It will flame out, like shining from shook foil”
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“It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil”
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“And for all this, nature is never spent;”
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“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;”
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“And though the last lights off the black West went”
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“Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —”
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“Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”