Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow and plough…


                              

Pied Beauty

~ by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Skyway Drive 365

    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 trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;

        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)

            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;

    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

                                                Práise hím.

Walnut Creek 2

Vacaville 199

Skyway Drive 356

 


First published in 1918, the above poem can be found in:

  • Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Catherine Phillips, ed.
    New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
  • Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition).
    New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
  • Skyway Drive 367

    Happy National Poetry Month!

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