Since her first poetry collection in 1981, Pattiann Rogers has built a reputation as one of America's most perceptive and thoughtful poets. Her works generally concern the natural world, with close observation of simple facts used to build the case for a higher order in the universe. This is certainly true of "The Greatest Grandeur," from Rogers's 1993 collection Geocentric. In this poem, Rogers explores a variety of things that people have considered the greatest grandeur, or sign of the universe's infinite wonder. With carefully chosen words and contrast of images, Rogers makes the magnificence of the natural world come alive on the page.

The examples that Rogers gives of candidates for the greatest grandeur in life range from the tiny electrons that surround an atom, to the raging seas, to the open sky itself. In the end, the poem suggests that the greatest grandeur of the universe is found in "the dark emptiness contained in every next moment." As with all of Rogers's poems, a religious reverence is felt, but she does not advocate any one religious system; instead, she finds an aspect of nature that includes most major religions.

"The Greatest Grandeur" is available in Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001, Rogers's collection of new and collected poems, published in 2001.