Summary and Brief Analysis of Hopkins’ Pied Beauty and God’s Grandeur

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.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Hopkins devoted most of his life to his religion. He studied theology, entered priesthood and even spent years teaching and preaching in various cities throughout England. At one point in his studies, he decided that writing poetry conflicted with his faith, and burned all of his work. Later, he found a way to reconcile his passion for writing and responsibilities within the church. As a result of this coexistence, Hopkins’ work is heavily influenced by his faith. This is the case in both Pied Beauty and God’s Grandeur.

In Pied Beauty, Hopkins shows a great appreciation for things that are of more than one color; “Pied” is defined as “having two or more colors.” In the first line, Hopkins credits God for dappled (marked with spots or round patches) things, and implies the value he sees in these things by thanking the divine for them. In the following lines, Hopkins goes into detail, listing examples of dappled things that he admires: the colors of the sky, the spotted skin of a cow, and the colorful skin of trout. In the fourth line, Hopkins creates an interesting image through his description of “fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls.” When chestnuts fall, the hard shell cracks and reveals its interior. Hopkins pairs this with coal, which is solid and dark, but adopts an internal glow when in a fire. Hopkins uses these images to contrast a tough outer shell with a mysterious and intriguing interior; in other words, things that are strange or misunderstood are not necessarily what they seem. And these things can actually be so much more valuable than they appear (coal gives heat and glows; chestnut shells reveal food). Hopkins next introduces the image of farmland, separated so different crops can be grown in each section. The divided farmland gives a sense of practical purpose to the image of the chestnut and coal in the sense that the farmland, along with its crops hidden under the dirt, is divided and worked at so it becomes dappled (some plots are planted, and some are left as empty dirt) and aid the farmers harvesting the crops. In the final line of the first stanza, Hopkins expands his examples to include all of man’s “trades,” meaning his materials, which by this point in history are growing increasingly diverse and complex.

The second stanza is where Hopkins explains why he bothered to list all of those dappled things in the earlier lines. He broadens his scope to all things “original, spare, strange,” and so on. Through the twelve total adjectives he uses, Hopkins creates an alliterative harmony: spare, strange; fickle, freckled; swift, slow; adazzle, dim. Hopkins chose these words specifically because they fit together in their number of syllables and in their spelling. This creates a poetic rhythm, a harmony between all of these misfit objects in the world. This makes them inherently valuable, and more pleasant to discuss and handle. Hopkins essentially reaches to include everything on Earth that was part of God’s original plan. These strange things may not appear valuable or ideally “beautiful,” Hopkins argues, they are objects that God has created and placed on Earth. And God, unlike earthly objects, is perfect and has given mankind these things out of his own love and generosity. Hopkins closes the poem by praising the Father for these unconventional yet essential gifts to humankind. Throughout the whole poem, it is clear to see that the theme of change and things moving in time is what Hopkins is trying to convey through his imagery. He writes of glimpses of these objects being captured by his mind before they are to be forever changed. Hopkins is showing how remarkable nature and the world can be when you are able to catch a glimpse of it and see it in a way that will never be seen again.

God’s Grandeur, on the other hand, is really an alliterative title that expresses Hopkins’ strong belief in the importance of God. The first line describes the world as “charged” with God, as if His spirit is electricity, running through His creation. He makes this image visible by describing the fleeting shine of foil when shaken, while comparing God to a rich oil, a valuable commodity that “wells up to greatness” when tapped and collected. Again, there is a theme of hidden value in the examples that Hopkins chooses to use; that things are not always what they seem. This idea could be extended to the believer’s understanding that believing is seeing, and faith is dependent on seeing God in everyday life instead of in the flesh. Hopkins uses these tangible examples to pose a question to his readers: how, in the face of this apparent proof of God, can people decide not to yield to His authority? Hopkins lived a life devoted to God, and uses his writing to express his confusion at the declining faith in God and religion during that time period. In the second half of the octave, Hopkins switches his focus from what he thinks people should be seeing to how he perceives the behavior that is prevalent in his society. The fifth line includes three repetitions of “have trod,” which serves as a way to speak out against the relentless routine that had rapidly changed over the past century. Hopkins wrote this poem in the 1870s, soon after the height of the industrial revolution, and this poem shows his inability to reconcile contemporary society with his idea of what a faithful life requires. He continues in the following lines, writing that several generations now are “seared with trade,” and “smeared with toil.” In the last line of the octave, Hopkins mourns for the bare soil, which represents the shift away from agriculture. He also references shoes by saying “nor can foot feel.” The shoes prevent people from physically connecting with the land, and this ties into the rejection of contemporary society in that man’s recreated industrial cities were not included in God’s original creation of the Earth, and therefore go against God’s intentions for the Earth and mankind.

In the sestet, Hopkins argues that despite the fact that Victorian society has turned away from God, he continues to offer his spiritual presence through nature, preserving a “freshness” that confirms God’s ability to continuously renew His creation. To ground this concept in a tangible example, Hopkins reminds his readers of the sun’s cycle of setting and then rising the following day: “And though the last lights off the black West went / Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs.” Even though the sun completely sets at night and leaves the world in darkness, it never fails to reappear each morning and bring light to a new day. Each morning, according to Hopkins, the Earth is renewed by the disappearance and reappearance of the sun’s light. In the final two lines, Hopkins clarifies what he believes the source to be: the Holy Ghost, or in other words, God. He “broods” over the “bent world,” protecting it and providing for it with a “warm breast” and “bright wings.” Here, Hopkins paints the picture of God as a mother hen, hovering over her eggs and giving them warmth and life. From this image readers can envision God as a selfless being, giving to mankind as a parent would for their child, and therefore deserves the respect and faith of His children.

In both Pied Beauty and God’s Grandeur, Gerard Hopkins asserts his faith in the Christian God to his audience. He confirms God as the creator of the Earth and Father of mankind, and by that fact worthy of mankind’s unwavering loyalty. Hopkins also displays a deep appreciation of objects with hidden value, and attempts to convince his readers of their importance in society. Hopkins was a man of Faith; he entered Priesthood, studied theology, and preached in several cities around England. For years, he struggled to reconcile his passion for poetry with his call to serve God. Through poems such as these, Hopkins found a middle ground: through poetry, he was able to tell others about the Lord, and how he shapes the readers’ world around them.