Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins Written: 1877 • Published: 1918
This poem is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.
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 all trades, 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.
Curator's Note
Hopkins invents his own form—the 'curtal sonnet,' a shortened sonnet—to praise God for 'dappled things,' for all that is 'counter, original, spare, strange.' The poem is a catalog of variegation: skies of couple-color, trout, finches' wings, chestnuts, landscapes. Hopkins's radical sprung rhythm and compound words ('rose-moles,' 'fresh-firecoal') create a verbal texture as varied as the things he praises. Written in 1877 but not published until 1918, it announces a completely new kind of English prosody. The poem argues that beauty lies not in uniformity but in gorgeous, God-given variation. Every reading reveals new felicities—this is poetry that rewards infinite attention.
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