Sunday, November 17, 2013

Pied Beauty

Why are wood rat nests... female pintails... patches of lichen on a boulder... hawthorn leaves half green and half gold... so lovely to me? Gerard Manley Hopkins would attribute it to God. I cannot. But I like his taste.

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.

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