Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Overview
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small! This is about the only hymn I remember from my days at a Church of England primary school, but what a belter.
No, I am not looking back on a missed opportunity of becoming a choir singing sensation. This poem mirror this hymn in giving a big shout out to the man upstairs. Hopkins wants us to appreciate the beauty of all things mixed colour, spotted, dabbled, striped. As opposed to focusing o more obvious and pure ideas of beauty, we are looking at the less celebrated beauty of aspects of nature that otherwise might be seen as messy or mixed up.
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all instipple 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.
Context
Hopkins was one of quite a crowd of priests/poets in the 19th Century. As such his poetry is dominated by religious ideas and the celebration of God. The poor chap battled with depression and self doubt throughout his life, which wasn’t help by the fact that his poetry didn’t really gain a following until after his death.
Themes
Although the poem is focused on the appreciation of Nature and challenges traditional concepts of beauty, it is framed as a celebration of the magnificence of the creator of it all. Thus, Nature, beauty and faith are key themes.
Content
This is going to be quick. Sandwiched between praising God, the poem celebrates a range of different elements of nature that lack pure colours or lines. We have multicoloured skies, fish, cows, birds and then landscapes. Hopkins even thinks about the messy or disorder state of industry or trade and finds Gods beauty. We then have a series of opposites listed to demonstrate that God’s creation of beauty knows many forms.
Language and Techniques
Forgive me the lack of a glossary here. I know there a few terms that might be a bit unfamiliar to the 21st Century ear, but I got three words into my glossary before realising that I was basically just repeating myself.
‘Pied’, ‘dappled’, ‘brinded’, ‘stipple’ and basically any of the adjectives in this poem mean spotty, streaky, spotty or patchy.
The difference is of some importance, but I will get to that as we explore the powerful imagery that is crucial to the poem.
All the imagery sits within a religious refrain. Hopkins begins with ‘Glory be to God’ and ends with ‘Praise him’, which makes it clear that this poem is not just a celebration of natural beauty, but really a celebration of the brilliance of God as evidenced by all these lovely things.
Notice that all of the different elements of this poem could be considered flawed or impure, but contrast this typical perception with the beautiful description. In contrast to a brilliant blue sky, Hopkins enjoys the splendour of a ‘couple-coloured’ sky and links this with a simile to the beauty of a ‘brinded cow’. Cows again aren’t typically considered to be one of the most beautiful of God’s creations, but just like the unique patterns of a mixed sky, the patches upon a cow may not be regular, but there is a beauty in their unique nature. Next up is the ‘rose-moles all in stipple upon trout’, which paints a rich image of the delicate spots on the fish. We also get the brief reference to ‘finches’ wings’, which appreciates a bird that at first sight is quite dull with a light brown and grey feathers.
*In England, school children grow up using cow and trout as two misogynistic insults (or at least they did when I was young), but Hopkins finds beauty.
My favourite piece of imagery comes in the very evocative ‘fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls’, which refers to the shine of chestnut that comes out of its shell looking as if it has been professionally polished. Here the metaphorical link to burning coal helps capture the richness of this shine and colour, as if the chestnut’s colour is changing as the fire consumes the coal.
This appreciation of unappreciated beauty moves from nature to mankind. Forget about beautiful princesses or dashing gentlemen, and instead take some time to see the beauty in man. Firstly Hopkins celebrates one of my favourite things about England, that I love each time I return. The alliterative, ‘landscape plotted and pieced’ is a wonderful depiction of the rolling hills of middle England where you see the land divided into all sorts of different odd sizes and shapes, with different crops or purpose like a magical patchwork quilt. The comparison between the patchwork and the specific ‘fold, fallow, and plough’ of a tilled field is a good way of helping the reader to picture the way the English landscape gently undulates.
We also appreciate ‘all trades, their gear and tackle and trim’. ‘Trades’ refers to things like builders, fishermen, carpenters, stonemasons, etc and there is normally a sense of those working in these trades as rough and ready, but here it is the disorder that is worth our attention.
In case we were not getting the picture, Hopkins sums up his message in line seven, as he praises ‘All things counter, original, spare, strange’, suggesting his list could go on and on.
On line nine, the poet juxtaposes opposite to show that beauty comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes and patterns. He praise ‘swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim’ to challenge any singular concept of beauty being one thing or another.
Structure
I love the rhythm of this poem, but almost feel that its order and regularity makes Hopkins something of a hypocrite after his celebration of all things a bit disordered. The disruption to the regularity at the end saves him, as does the fact the poem is eleven lines (rhyme scheme of ABCABCDBCDC). The rhyme scheme helps contribute a soft and calm rhythm to the poem.
Hopkins employs asyndetic listing throughout the poem going from one ideas to another quite rapidly and this gives the poem a feel like his listing could go on and on. Of course, this is exactly what Hopkins thought and is at pains to stress with phrases like ‘things’ and ‘all things’. This isn’t an exclusive list of beautiful things, but just the drop in the ocean of the beauty God has created and elements that have caught the poets imagination.
Tone
This is delivered with a calm tone of awe for all the magnificent creations of God. It is controlled and slow, but each individual image is rich and worthy of our admiration.
