Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things-

     For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

        For rose-moles all in stipple upon a trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;

     Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;

        An all trades, 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.

Fr Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

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