The Poetry of 
Gerard Manley Hopkins 

 


 
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 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. 



 
The Windhover 
          To Christ our Lord 

     I caught this morning morning's minion, king- 
          dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding 
          Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding 
     High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpled wing 
          As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding 
          Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding 
     Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! 

     Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here 
          Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion 
          Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! 

          No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion 
     Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, 
          Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion. 

 



 

 

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