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JOSIE'S POEMS
PIED BEAUTY
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets.
See my 'shadow poem' based on this wonderful poem: 'BRINDLED BEAUTY'
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.
FORM
This is one of Hopkins’ 'curtal' (or curtailed) sonnets. Instead of the eight lines of the octave to six with the ABC ABC rhyming.
The six lines of the sestet have been reduced to four and a half.
This alteration of the sonnet form, to me anyway, is quite fitting to this type of poem, and I like it very much. I like the variation on the word 'pied', eg 'dappled', 'stipple', 'tackle', 'fickle', 'freckled', 'adazzle' etc which weave together the poem with the colours suggested by these words.
Brinded and Brindled:
Both words mean: Having obscure dark streaks or flecks on a usually gray or tawny ground a brindled/brinded cow.
I love the way he praises God for these stippled, 'brindled' and pied colours that we see in the world of nature, and I have finished my own poem 'Brindled Beauty' with thanks also.
Enough! Josie