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.
There is something wonderfully liberating about the way Gerard Manley Hopkins begins this poem. No gentle clearing of the throat, no slow approach — he simply bursts into praise. And not for the grand or the obvious, but for the small, the mottled, the ordinary, the things we might overlook on our way to something more impressive.
Hopkins invites us to see God’s hand in the world’s variety: the speckled cow, the freckled trout, the patchwork fields, the changing skies. It is a hymn to the God who delights in difference, texture, surprise. In a world that often prizes uniformity and tidiness, Hopkins reminds us that God’s creativity is exuberant, playful, and endlessly diverse.
There is a quiet pastoral wisdom here. Much of our life is lived not in the dramatic moments but in the in‑between ones — the half‑finished, the imperfect, the “pied.” Hopkins suggests that these are not obstacles to God’s glory but places where it is most tenderly revealed. The unevenness of our days, the mixture of joy and frustration, the patchwork of our own character — all of it can be gathered into praise.
And then, with that characteristic Hopkins turn, the poem shifts from the many-coloured world to the One who made it. Creation is changeable, fleeting, full of movement; God is steadfast, unchanging, the source of all beauty. The poem’s final line — “Praise Him” — lands not as a command but as a natural response. Once we have truly looked, truly noticed, praise becomes almost inevitable.
Perhaps that is the invitation for us this week: to look again. To notice the small mercies, the unexpected colours, the quiet gifts woven into our days. To let gratitude rise not only for the polished and the perfect but for the dappled, the ordinary, the beautifully imperfect world God has entrusted to us. May we learn, with Hopkins, to praise the God who delights in “pied beauty,” and who delights in us as well.
