Pied Beauty

Something a bit different this morning. We're wrapping up my Victorian Literature class with a look at some of the period's poetry. A bit of a shame since this stuff is so fun. I was assigned a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. His name sounded vaguely familiar, but it still gave me those shivers that only curiously worded Victorian names can give you (oh don't snort out there in the back, you know that you have shivered over long 19th century names at least once in your life!!!).

Aaaanywho. I actually had my eye on another poet, so I was a bit bummed when I got this fellow; however, Pied Beauty also sounded vaguely familiar so I held my breath...

Turns out this fellow is brilllllllliant! The things he did with language were amazing, specially for a guy who didn't always feel that poetry was really his proper calling! Apparently he invented his own mini version of the sonnet, called the curtal sonnet (11 lines instead of 14), and he thought he'd share it with us mathematically like this:
.
!¡!¡!¡!
Yea, that's what I said.

Anywho, Pied Beauty is a treat, and since it's only 11 lines long I give it here for your pleasure:

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.

And, for a parting shot, wanna have your head blown off by this one? (pun intended :P)
try reading it aloud, it's ten times funner (I include this word for Amy's enjoyment...) that way

The Windhover
To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,	5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion	10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.