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I fell in under the spell of this poem at unlikely time–as a freshman in college. I didn’t understand poetry at the time nor did I grasp its relevance to my life, but when Professor George read Pied Beauty, I felt it, in my bones. I could appreciate the idea of “dappled things” like on this first day of a New England fall. Kelly Salasin Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918. |
13. 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; | 5 |
| 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: | 10 |
| Praise him. | |
This Vermont Life 