Pied Beauty

Here is Gerald Manley Hopkins' celebration of diversity and the beauty in things of various colors and textures. "Pied" in this sense means "patchy in color."

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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 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.



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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.