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Poem: “Pied Beauty”

by on May 11, 2012 in Poetry
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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.

Gerald Manley Hopkins


Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, England in 1844. He was a Jesuit priest and a poet. During his lifetime, most of his poems were rejected for publication. After a difficult life filled with depression and what he considered personal failures, Hopkins died of Typhoid fever in 1889. He was 44 years old. However, on his deathbed his depression seemed to have left him, his last words being, “"I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life." He is thought of as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. He is famous for his use of sprung rhythm, at a time when metered rhythm was the norm.