Introductory Note:
Today, we start off with a short poem of gratitude from Gerard Manley Hopkins for the “pied beauty” of the world—those lovely flashes of two or more colors with which God paints so many things. Whether stippled trout or brinded cow, a finch’s wing or ploughed up field, may we all find some time to revel in the “original, spare and strange” in all the places we may discover them.
Renovaré Team
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
In the public domain via Interesting Literature. (Please visit their site; they have engrossing write-ups of this and other Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.)
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