Consider Pied Beauty as a religious poem / Describe Hopkins as a religious poet.
Introduction: Pied Beauty is a curtal sonnet composed in 1877 and published in 1918 in the posthumous collection Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889). The description of the poem makes it a fantastic religious poem. He was an English poet and Jesuit priest. As a professional touch, he composes the poem.
“Pied Beauty” is a religious poem: After scanning the poem, we get sundry religious points of view which are given below.
Observation of dappled things: Dappled things mean multi-coloured things. The speaker of the poem observes dappled things at the outset of the poem. The speaker thinks that God is the creator of these multi-coloured things which are fantastically fantastic. He quotes sky, cow, fish, bird, landscape and trades for showing dappled things around us. As a priest, he can feel the spiritual element in these things that refers to religious belief. In poet’s tongue:
“Glory be to God for dappled things”
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Declaration of God’s glorification by all things: The speaker of the poem declares God’s glorification without any media. The poet covers a wide range of things to illustrate the pied beauty of the world which bear the sign of God’s glory. The poet mentions skies of couple-colour, the trout with their rose-coloured skin spotted with black, fallen chestnuts revealing the reddish-brown nut, finches’ wings, the landscape which looks like a patchwork and all trades. He also mentions the things which are opposite in nature to the declaration of God’s glorification. The poet says:
“For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.”
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No creation can be avoided: By the poem, Hopkins means to say that we should praise our creator. Because if small things can be superb for beauty, He makes us, the best creation of God, how beautiful we are. Spiritually, the speaker says that we should not avoid any creation of God. Because every creation has a different type of sign of the almighty God.
Power of God’s creations: Man has created many things. These are beautiful as well. But these are not permanent. On the other hand, God’s creations are beautiful and Himself as well. The beauty of God is permanent and not changeable. He says that for permanent beauty, we should praise God, the creator of all dappled things. For example, God creates our tongue which is the mysterious part of our body. Our tongue can recognise more than one taste. The poet quotes:
“He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.”
Conclusion: To sum up, from the light of the above discussion, we can say that this poem is a purely religious poem by Hopkins. Every line of the poem has both, directly and indirectly, the touch of God’s supremacy. The poet directly praises God in the poem.
