Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877): An Analysis

 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 all trades, 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.

It’s been some time since I did a close reading of a nineteenth-century poem on my blog, so today I thought I’d write about “Pied Beauty,” a short and, I think, wonderful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which was written in 1877.

The Argument of the Poem: Hopkins calls on the reader to praise God, who he says created many things in nature that are awe-inspiring for their irregularity, variety, and changeability. These include natural wonders (the sky, which changes color, and chestnuts, which reveal their insides like coals in a fire when they fall and break), animals (cows, trout, finches), and instances of humankind’s impact on the world around us (agriculture, sectioning off the landscape into fields, and other trades, which interact with nature). He closes the poem by contrasting these “dappled things” with God, whose beauty is unchanging and permanent. 

Similarity and Difference: Hopkins uses various literary techniques to meditate on his themes of similarity vs. variety. He employs alliteration (the use of the same starting letter) and internal rhyme, to create a series of pairs throughout the poem (couple-colour; fresh-firecoal; plotted and pierced; fickle, freckled; fathers-forth), giving us a sense of the intelligent design he sees behind the randomness of nature. And he also uses the same technique to pair words with opposite meanings (swift, slow; sweet, sour), which helps downplay their difference and attributes them all to the same higher power. The rhyme scheme of the poem’s lines also plays into this, encouraging us to link the cow to the plough, things to wings, strange to change, and so on. 

Rhetoric: Hopkins was a lover of rhythm, who invented his own schematic for marking emphasis in poetry. And we can see that this is a poem that almost demands to be read aloud. In addition to the repetitions, alliterations, and rhymes mentioned above, the poem starts with a familiar invocation to prayer ("Glory be to God") and ends with one too ("Praise him"). There is also a rhetorical question ("who knows how?") in the middle, which suggests however much we meditate on nature and glorify God, his actions will still remain mysterious. 

Pairing the High with the Low: One thing I love about this poem is how it soars to lofty heights, but then pulls us back to earth, giving us the impression of a poet who is humble and a God for whom all things and creatures matter—great and small. Hopkins compares multicolored sunsets to the hide of a cow. He rhymes his final word, "him," which references God, with the usually not so flattering word “dim.” And he pairs a word that’s strongly associated with beauty, “rose,” with the decided less elegant “moles” to show how he finds beauty in all things. In short, again and again, he delivers on the promise made by the title of the poem—this is about “Pied Beauty,” which doesn’t have to be a contradiction.

What Victorian poem would you like to read me write about next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. In the mood for more poetry? Check out my blog posts on Tennyson (“The Lady of Shallot,” “Ulysses,” “The Kraken,” “To Virgil,” and “The Epic”), Swinburne, Longfellow, Barrett Browning, and Mew.

A Victorianist's Guide to Oxford

‘Towery city and branchy between towers’ – the opening line of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem ‘Duns Scotus’s Oxford’ has always summed up for me the appearance of England’s first university city on a sunny morning. One of Oxford’s greatest attractions is this sense of continuity with the past – the idea that the city looked much the same over a century ago and even further back than that. So for any Victorianists looking to take a trip to Oxford in the near future, I’ve compiled a list of attractions which could help you feel even closer to the Oxford of Hopkins and his contemporaries:

Print of Merton College, Oxford

Have a pint in Hardy-named pub: Jude may not have made it into a Christminster college but you can visit his namesake pub in Oxford – Jude the Obscure in Jericho. There’s also a Far from the Madding Crowd more centrally.

The library at the Oxford Union

Admire the pre-Raphaelite murals in the Union: The Oxford Union, Oxford’s student debating society (founded 1823), boasts beautiful buildings, as well as an illustrious history. Commissioned by John Ruskin, the library murals depict scenes from Arthurian myth (think Tennyson) and were painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

Visit Keble College: Contrasting strongly with many of the older colleges, Keble (founded 1870) is every bit as grand, but strikingly different with its neo-Gothic red brick buildings, designed by William Butterfield.

Watch a play in Ancient Greek: The Oxford Greek Play has a tradition going back over130 years (you can read my post on the history of the Cambridge Greek Play here). The next production will be in Autumn 2014 at the Oxford Playhouse (and don’t worry, there are surtitles!).

Take a peek in Max Beerbohm’s room: Essayist, theatre critic and parodist Max Beerbohm (also known for his Oxford-based novel Zuleika Dobson (1911)) was at Merton College in the 1890s. A small set of rooms appended to the college’s Old Library now hold many of his satirical drawings and other items of interest.

Do you know of any other top spots for Victorianists among the dreaming spires? Let me know here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!