Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley 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.
2 comments:
This is wonderful. As I switch into a pie-less 2012 world (I'm not ready to essay tofu-based baking), this will comfort me. When Caroline was growing up, she told me that her earliest theology was informed by the important prayer which began "Our Father who art in Devon, Harold be thy name." Devon is a village quite close where I'm sitting. She never quite worked out the Harold part, although I believe she had an uncle of that name once. Curtis
I have heard that tofu can replace cream cheese, the silken tofu, that is. So in a cream pie, it's supposed to be quite good. As to fruit pies, I don't care about the crust, just the fruit inside, so I am sure there is a way to approximate some of the pie bliss . . .
And yes, there was a boy in our class called Howell who sobbed when Mrs. W said the prayer was not in his name. It must be confusing for a lot of kids. Funny. I always liked that prayer and have always liked Hopkins, but every time I heard or read this poem, mostly heard, I thought of apple pies. And immediately thought the cow had to be a Jersey. I suppose a chocolate pie with ice cream dripping could be a brinded cow, but who puts ice cream on a chocolate pie? These things one thinks of when listening to poetry in grade school.
I never worried about what the poems meant or whether I liked them or not. I just got stuck on one line or another, one image or sound, . . .
Similarly, when in his poem, God's Grandeur, Hopkins talks about the world --like shining from shook foil, I decided that the world on an icy morning looked like it was wrapped in Saran Wrap. I thought it was kind of a la Hopkins.
Post a Comment