Pied Beauty

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory to be 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.

From:  Americans’ Favorite Poems by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz; © 2000 by Robert Pinsky; W.W. Norton and Company, New York