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July 3, 2007
Pied Beauty & God's Grandeur
As I put up my new banner with the dragonfly which is looking slightly to the right, I want to share a poem that greatly shaped my aesthetics when I read it in graduate school and wrote a paper on it. It taught me to see the beauty of the variegated, the assymetrical, the diverse, and to give praise to the creator. The poem is by 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.
Also, do you ever get despondent over the mess that humanity seems to be making of the planet? Do you get weary because of the sadness of history? Then, perhaps another poem by Hopkins may remind you of the presence and grandeur that we Christians believe is still undergirding it all (or brooding it over it), the person who is still shaping a billion, billion stories to his good purposes. One day all things will be made new. Rest in that thought.
And, oh yeah, this second poem is a sonnet, I suppose, but of a different form than I am accustomed to writing.
God's Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Random Poetry | By jackdas | 12:36 PM
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Comments
Yay Hopkins! I really like imaging the Holy Spirit so near to us that you can feel the warmth emanating from His breast. I’m amazed by the fact that God, in his radiance, desires to cozy up to our muddiness. “shook foil” wow.
Posted by: Heidi Vincent at July 3, 2007 1:27 PM
Ah Hopkins... The vivid strokes of joy in his poems always amaze me because I know that underneath he suffered with extreme bouts of sadness.
Do you know he burned many of his poems. I think this was a result of him becoming a Jesuit.
Posted by: Laura at July 3, 2007 3:35 PM
"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."
thanks for sharing both the photos and the inspiration of your aesthetic philosophy. glad we get to be audience to the gift. the dragonfly is exceptional, and i especially love the mushroom ones. when you look at them, you feel like you're a wee fairy in an enchanted forest. or maybe a wee gnome. cheers. lovely work.
Posted by: ange at July 3, 2007 4:04 PM
