Pied Beauty

Little Still Life (Dappled, Freckled, Strange)    graphite on paper   2017

While I was working on this little drawing of gourds last month I couldn't stop thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkin's 'Pied Beauty.'  I'll include it below, for any of you who are so unfortunate as to have never read it before, and for those of you who have read it and, like me, delight in the chance of reading it again.

Pied Beauty
by 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 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.