this too
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
  Dappled



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 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.


Gerard Manley Hopkins


Not my God,
but my sense of glory in this glorious patterning.


Cambridge, 8.5.2005
 
Comments:
I love the way Hopkins uses language.
 
I remember studying that poem at school. It made little sense to a 12-year-old; I couldn't see beyond the words, and I think too I was put off by that first line.

It took about 30 years before I finally "got it". But I'm glad I did.

Or maybe in some way I did get it back then; I don't remember encountering it again, but I know the words stuck in my mind, waiting for the day, decades later, when suddenly something would click into place and they'd make sense.

Thanks for the reminder :-)
 
Hopkins also has some of the most powerful poems about depression: "Carrion Comfort" and the one that contains the line, "Oh, the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall..."

Splendid photodappling, Jean.
 
Hopkins is an astonishing poet, but your photos make his poetry come alive.
 
Beautiful!
 
I feel the same way as you do about GMH's poem. It's wonderful, and it speaks of the world's wonderful variegation, but to give credit for all that to some God-daddy is a kindergarten step I'm no longer willing to make.
 
Oh, that last comment was from Abdul-Walid of Acerbia.
 
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