9 Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Pied Beauty
In this lyric poem the English priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins celebrates the beauty of the irregular.
Hopkins joined the Catholic Church at age twenty-two, in 1866. “Pied Beauty” is dated eleven years later, in 1877, the year Hopkins was ordained. In this poem Hopkins chooses to praise God for the beautiful imperfection of nature. Readers, however, need not share his kind of piety to share his admiration for “dappled things.”
“Pied” means “of two or more colors in blotches” and the poem begins with gorgeous and irregular natural sights, notably mottled color. As it progresses, though, it widens to encompass also the “dappled” impressions made on the other senses by man-made things, behavior (“fickle”), and “all things counter, original, spare, strange.” The poet sees the beauty, and the divine source, of them all.
“Pied Beauty” sees, and praises. It does not seek to alter, improve, or even understand. Would the appreciation the poet feels be compatible with a more active approach to his subject? Would it be compatible with an impulse to regularize or improve upon the irregular? – Leon Kass
Pied Beauty
Consider this:
- When and to what extent should we strive to change and alter nature, especially our own given nature, in an effort to improve or save it?
- When and to what extent should we strive to accept and appreciate nature and our own given nature in an effort to know or savor it?
- How is imperfection related to beauty? Is the relationship different in nature than in man-made things? Is it different in human beings?
- Why would a perfect Creator create an imperfect world?
