Poetry Month - Day 17

A Facebook friend posted a poem on my wall yesterday, and a search shows me that, even though it's an old favorite, I've never posted it here before. Time to remedy that! I love this celebration of the glorious variety of the natural world. Surely it wasn't necessary for the earth to be as beautiful as it is. But it is! Glory be to God!

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.

At this link you can listen to the poem being read.  I seem to have posted two Hopkins poem on this blog in the past, both paired with another poem.  Last year I chose "No Worst, There is None..." for Good Friday (along with a link to some information about the poet), and I shared "Spring" in March 2010.