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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Pied Beauty













A topic of discussion during the potato-planting today - Gerald Manley Hopkins' "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 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.

2 comments:

Joe W said...

Thank you. Love Hopkins. Just look at all these gorgeous i's pumping like the pulse of life in Spring:
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing

robertguyton said...

Yes. It's the first lines that I like best:

"Nothing is so beautiful as spring -
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;"

This describes my garden to perfection.