Honestly, I don’t read a lot of poetry and I’ve never tried writing it outside of school assignments, but there are certain poems that have just stuck with me. This is one of them, which I had forgotten for a long time, but which came back to me (well, a few lines came back, then google helped with the rest) after one of those glorious sun-spattered days we had last week. Yes, part of the reason I am posting this is to lure the sun back again. I do enjoy the fact I’ve been able to make good use of my new tattooed rain boots but enough is enough!

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.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins