Pied Beauty-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hey world.

This week I've got a gorgeous poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that is just bursting with colours:

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.

This poem is such a fantastic celebration of life and imperfection. As you'll note, none of the things listed in the poem are flawless. Here Gerard Manley Hopkins creates a pied collection of minor things that today I feel that people overlook or simply don't notice, instead we are all looking at one screen or another.

See, I'm not a big fan of technology. I grew up in a house full of books, and my parents both had
tiny flip up phones until I was about seven. For the key parts of my childhood, my world was screen free. I only got a proper, touchscreen phone of my own when I was thirteen. That's pretty late compared to some.

Today I go to the super market and I see these tiny children with ipads and phones grasped in their little hands, their eyes dull and unblinking. It depresses me greatly to see someone so young, so 'switched off' (excuse the pun) and unengaged in the world around them.

I understand that technology has made everyone's (including my own) life a lot easier, but it has also made us a lot lazier. I mean, come on, how hard is it to go to the library and open a book? I know googling something is easier and requires less effort, but humans survived for centuries without these strange rectangles of plastic and metal. Human interactions are being lost because of this, especially in children and teenagers.

Anyway, my point is, people's eyes only see what is on the screens (right in front of them). The art of looking at something deeply and the art of considering something with your entire attention is becoming more and more rare. The world has become too one dimensional, and I hope that changes in my lifetime. Therefore I urge everyone who is reading this, look up from the screen and look around. Look. Just go outside and look at the trees, the sky, feel the wind. We live in an incredibly beautiful world, with so many different things to discover. We are so lucky to live on a fantastic blue planet, with so many wonders that are just waiting for us. First get rid of the screens.

Ok, rant over. Where were we?

Right, 'Pied Beauty'. Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet, Catholic and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. This poem fits in nicely with the theme of this post, the natural world and the beauties it possesses. Manley Hopkins is urging us in this poem not just to look at the world around us, but to envelop ourselves in it. Get lost in the sky and the trees and grass. His style is so organic and free, so the reader is, as I've said, completely enthralled in the nature portrayed here. Another theme in this poem is ecology. Ecology is everything to do with the environment, and in 'Pied Beauty' Manley Hopkins explores just that. His vivid descriptions of the environment around him come to life, so that the reader can actually see the burning autumn trees,

'Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls;'
and the irregular patchwork quilt of fields-

'landscape plotted and pieced- fold, fallow, and plough;'

He is essentially opening our eyes here. He really looked at things; he has made the rest of us seem blind. He reminds us that nature is a force of itself, both in its wildness and its cycle of life and death. Today, mankind has tamed nature and it is rapidly being cut back. Think about it- deforestation, urbanisation, industrialisation, development etc.

Manley Hopkins' role as a priest meant that most of his poetry was originally based on his religious worldview, and you can pick up on several religious references:

'Glory be to God for Dappled things'
'He fathers forth...'
'Praise him.'
However, this poem doesn't strike me as a devout priest listing all the things he's grateful for in a reverent gospel speech to his god. Instead, I think this poem is entirely original. When Manley Hopkins wrote this poem, nature was a much more dominant force in his world. His obervation in this poem is amazing and When he wrote this, there were way more trees in the world than there are now. Isn't that sad? He is an essential wake up call for us, especially with the whole worldwide issue of global warming that is encroaching on our environments day by day. The earth takes care of us only if we take care for it, we will both end up dying out in the end otherwise.

The last stanza I find quite interesting:

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.

Here again he celebrates the imperfections of nature, categorizing them rather as perfect. It's all in the penultimate line. "He (God) fathers-forth (creates these things in his image) whose beauty is past change (and He is perfect)"

It is a logically consistent proposition:

1. God creates everything in His image;
2. God is perfect:
3. Therefore these things are perfect.

If we can't see the perfection in these "dappled things", it is only because we are somehow imperfect. (Although if God made us, it gets really complicated!)

This poem poem encourages us to be different.
Individuality is an important thing, and being different is not a bad thing. Imperfection is not something to be ashamed of, or something that should be deemed ugly. Imperfection, to me, is ten times better than something perfect and fake. To me, imperfection is something real and alive, as I've discussed in this post. Nature is imperfection, and I think if we all remember that, we would be whole lot happier.

Be yourself, world. Celebrate all your imperfections.

-A. Heezen