Pied Beauty

by 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.

• … freckled (who knows how?): well, here.
• It’s a curtal sonnet, which is a new! exciting! interpretation of the sonnet form from Hopkins. Not new anymore, I guess.
• Here’s a study guide for this poem.