Pied Beauty

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Pied, Dappled, and Freckled

In “Pied Beauty,” Hopkins focuses on two key motifs that reflect the themes of the work. The poem’s motifs can be broken down by simply digesting the title of the piece: “Pied Beauty.” The word “pied” refers to objects that possess two or more colors; this can occur in a variety of ways in the natural world, and Hopkins provides several examples of animals and landscapes that are “pied,” such as: “skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow” (Line 2) and “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim” (Line 3). In these examples, Hopkins describes a sky that is brindled, like a cow and spotted trout. He goes on to describe more instances of natural variation: A “[l]andscape plotted and pieced” (Line 5) is reminiscent of a quilt made of patches, and people or things that are “freckled” (Line 8) possess a sense of uniqueness.

Beauty

Hopkins uses these examples of piebald, spotted, dotted, “dappled things” (Line 1) to address the concept of beauty as something that is found in what is “counter, original, spare, strange; / Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)” (Lines 7-8). While the description of “dappled things” (Line 1) helps explain Hopkins’s notion of nature as something that is defined by its unusualness and variation, the question of aesthetic beauty is also addressed: “With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; / He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change” (Lines 9-10). Although the word “beauty” appears in the title and so is obviously in question throughout the poem, the concept is not explicitly addressed again until the closing lines of the poem, when Hopkins relates the changeable beauty of nature to He “whose beauty is past change” (Line 10): God. Hopkins compares the imperfect, variable beauty of nature to the perfect, unchanging beauty of God.