Dappled Things

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

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: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

A "Couple-Colour" Sky

This poem by Hopkins is one of my favorites with its descriptions of the natural world with the closing remark to praise G*D for all things created. Love it!