Gerard Manley Hopkins was written Pied Beauty poem at St. Bruno's summer 1877, but published in 1918. It is a curtal sonnet.
Pied Beauty poem Summary
The poem is a hymn to creation, praising God by praising the created world. The narrator of the poem says that we should praise God for the skies with two colours, like a two-coloured cow; for the little reddish dots on the side of trout; for the way fallen chestnuts look like red coals in a fire; for the blended colours of the wings of a finch; for landscapes divided up by humans into plots for farming: for all the different jobs that humans do.
The poet then descrÃbes the qualities of the dappled things. The dappled things are opposite to what is normal; they are original, they are “spare” and don't appear in great numbers, and they are “strange” or unusual. They are fickle, that is, something that changes a lot and freckled, that is, spotted.
Some of them are swift, while some other are slow; some of them are sweet, while some others are sour; and some of them are bright. while some others are lustreless or dim. He asserts that God is the father of all beautiful things. God has created all beautiful things. But the beauty of the things created by God is temporary.
Though the beauty of the things created by God changes, His own beauty remains changeless. So, he advises readers to praise God.
Pied Beauty poem extended Summary
In the first stanza, the poet takes pleasure in the “pied beauty” of Nature its dappled and variegated appearance. He admires these things and also the creator. He proceeds to give us examples of Nature's beauty to reveal the idea that God's glory is reflected in all his creation-in the “skies of couple-colour”, in the trout (a kind of fish) swimming around with their rose-coloured skin spotted with black, in the chestnut which after having fallen on the ground breaks open, revealing the reddish-brown kernel within, in the beautiful wings of finches (songbirds).
The man also has created many dappled things-he cuts landscape into plots and fields. Some plots are used as sheepfolds, some fields remain uncultivated and used as a pasture ground, and yet some fields are ploughed to raise crops. Not only the world of Nature but even the world of trade and commerce with its neat and well- maintained equipment and apparatus, is also beautiful.
In the second stanza, the poet admires the co-existence of contrary things; he admires their uniqueness and originality, their rarity which makes them precious and their oddness which differentiates each from the others. He likes their very fickleness and their speckled appearance. At the same time he asks the metaphysical question: “Who knows how?”
The question reveals that nobody can explain the reason why these things are “freckled”. Some things are swift, others slow; some are swept, others sour; some are exceptionally bright, others lifeless. But no one knows the reason for this contrasts.
The poet further says that God is the source or origin of all these things. God's beauty is reflected in all the things that surround us. The whole process is quite mysterious. It arouses question how these things are created and in what way. The things whether similar or opposed to each other originate from God, the father of everything.
The beauty of Nature is transient whereas the beauty of God permanent and not changeable. So we should praise God the creator of all dappled things.
Important questions about Pied Beauty
What kind of Poem is ‘Pied Beauty’?
✓ Pied Beauty is a curtal sonnet by poet G.M. Hopkins.
What is a curtal sonnet?
✓ Curtal sonnet an eleven line sonnet devised by Hopkins and featuring an abc abc, dbc dc rhyme scheme.
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