The cruelest month: Whatever is fickle

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.