Today’s National
Poetry Month poem is one of my all-time favorites. I
can’t even say the opening line without my spirits lifting. It’s Gerard Manley
Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”.
It makes me think of tabby cats, speckled carp, English sparrows and playgrounds full of redheaded pale-skinned Irish lads and lasses.
And--seriously, is there a better entry into a
poem than “Glory be to God for dappled things”? Where would that be? This poem practically sings itself.
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 the moment (April being indeed the cruelest
month), my spirits are in dire need of lifting. I’m holding on to this one.
But I’m sharing, too.
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