Speckled eggs? Piebald horses?

December 27, 2008 1:23 PM

"God bless the speckled things"? What poem am I misremembering?

Arrgh! This poem has been at the tip of my tongue all day long but my brain just can't find it, and my efforts at googling have been unsuccessful.

More clues:
- It's a list of beautiful speckled things in nature
- I think it contains the word "piebald"
- It might be by Auden, Housman, or WC Williams
- I will never know peace again until I find it

Thank you!

posted by ourobouros to writing & language (5 comments total)

"Pied Beauty", GM Hopkins.

Glory be to god!
posted by kenko at 1:26 PM on December 27, 2008

link.

Glory be, in particular, for dappled things.
posted by kenko at 1:27 PM on December 27, 2008

It's by Gerald 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.
posted by kingfisher, his musclebound cat at 1:28 PM on December 27, 2008

Thank you, thank you! I can live again!
posted by ourobouros at 1:30 PM on December 27, 2008

Damn, beat to the punch. Hopkins is awesome.
posted by scody at 1:40 PM on December 27, 2008