Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have always loved poems and this semester in my Textual Analysis class we have mostly been talking about poems. Today, I would like to share on of the poems with you. The poem is called Pied Beauty and is written by Gerard Manley Hopkins.


Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford on July the 28th 1844 and died in Dublin on June the 8th 1889. Gerard Manley Hopkins is considered to be one of the best poets of the Victorian era. Sadly, many of his poems were not accepted for publication until after his death. He never received the recognition that he deserved whilst still alive.


The poem that I am writing my essay about is Pied Beauty. Pied Beauty is a curtal sonnet, it was written in 1877 when Gerard was 33 years old, at that time he had failed his final theology exam and therefore could not become a priest, but published 29 years after his death in 1918. It was one of the first poems he had written in a sprung rhythm style he claimed to have discovered. 


In the poem the narrator appreciates all the things God has given the world, mostly that can be found the nature. 

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.

Sources:


Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)


Poetry Foundation