Glory Be to God for Dappled Things (Weekly Poem)

Welcome to Verbum’s series on sacred poetry. Each week for the next several months, we’re featuring entries from respected poets on divine subjects.

Today’s poem, “Pied Beauty,” praises God for the variety in his creation compared to his immutability.

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

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.

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Read more poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins in the book Hopkins, available in Verbum.