Poem: Pied Beauty, by 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.



Pied Beauty by Hopkins at Bartleby

Biography: Hopkins was a student at Oxford who won a rare double-first in "Classics" and "Greats". He became a Jesuit priest and took various occupations, including professor of Greek and Latin, and parish priest. He learned Welsh as an adult, and experimented with new poetic forms varying rhythms. He is among the top Victorian-era poets, though poems (included Pied Beauty) were published after his death.