pied beauty: gerard manley hopkins

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 áll trádes, 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.

---

Gerard Manley Hopkins alliterated experience into a strange, powerful new form of verse. As in many of his other poems, he uses Pied Beauty to alienate nature from the familiarity of the senses. The patterns on trout turn to 'rose-moles all in stipple' while clouds mottle the sky like the spots on a cow. He hides the poem's central theme--the varieties of human appearance and behavior--beneath the fig leafs of humility and the mysteries of God. He never uses the words 'human,' yet he cuts nature with human typologies and contradictions. You and I are the most 'counter, original, spare, strange' creatures that he knows; we are alternately 'swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.' He could hold our fickleness against us, but he prefers to hold it a virtue and a grace. 'Praise him.'

I had heard this poem before, but it stumbled my way again at Rubber Repertory's Pilot Balloon Church-House, where it serves as their daily prayer. Many thanks to Josh and Matt for their hospitality! It's been a wonderful week in Kansas.