Linda's Literary Home

Tag: nature

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley  Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” is an eleven-line curtal sonnet, dedicated to honoring and praising God for the special beauty of His creation.  Father Hopkins coined the term “curtal” to label his eleven-line sonnets.

    Introduction and Text of “Pied Beauty”

    The speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem/hymn “Pied Beauty” offers a tribute to the Creator for all things natural and human inspired, with special emphasis on things that are multi-colored, dotted, striped, or patterned in ingenious ways.  The poem employs Father Hopkins’ famed sprung rhythm and unique rime scheme: ABCABCDBCDC.  

    The poem is an eleven-line sonnet called a curtal, a term which Father Hopkins coined to describe the form he employed in certain of his poems, including “Pied Beauty.”  While the speaker emphasizes beauty by contrasting things that are widely touted as unpleasant yet possess a certain aura of unique loveliness, he ultimately is affirming that God has made all of creation to reflect various styles of beauty.

    Thus, the speaker begins by giving all “glory” to God for all these created things, and he concludes by insisting that God be praised for giving humankind these many patterned objects of beauty.   

    God and beauty are being weighed in special terms as the speaker creates in his hymn a drama of oppositional tension that results in the creation of balance and harmony.    Through appreciation and praise of God for His gifts, humankind learns that balance and harmony in order to complete life’s goals and purposes. 

    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.

    Recitation of “Pied Beauty”

    Commentary on “Pied Beauty”

    Father Hopkins’ poem remarkably enlists several synonyms for the important title term “pied.”  Those synonyms are dappled, couple-colour, brinded (archaic form of brindled), stipple, and freckled.   All of those terms refer to multi-color or dotted patterns that so often appear in nature, that this observant human heart finds divinely inspired.

    The poem is, therefore, a hymn honoring the Supreme Creator of all that exists.  The piece offers gratitude that the Heavenly Father-Creator has fashioned His world to provide delight for His children.

    First Movement:  A Pattern of Gratitude

    Glory be to God for dappled things –

    The speaker begins by glorifying Creator-God for having effected His world to include objects that are multi-spotted and multi-colored.  While the speaker undoubtedly offers God all glory to everything in creation, he also glorifies his Creator for not only things but also events.  The act of creation remains of particular interest.

    The speaker appears to be concentrating on a certain style and pattern that the Almighty has chosen to bestow on certain of His creatures and things.  And this devout speaker remains most appreciative of those patterns.  Thus, the glory, the honor, and the achievement of God have infused this speaker’s heart and mind to express gratitude.

    Second Movement:  Examples of All Things Dappled

    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.

    The speaker then offers examples of those “dappled” things for which he is offering glory to God. He appreciates the sky that ofttimes appears as multi-colored as a spotted bovine.  The speaker is thankful also for the patterns that are dotted over the bodies of “trout that swim.”  These stippling patterns resemble small mole-like roses as they decorate the skin of those fish.

    This observant, devout speaker also adores the beauty of fallen chestnuts that resemble freshly set-ablaze fire coals on a grate or in a stove.   He also uses the “finches’ wings” to exemplify his appreciation for things “dappled.”  The wings of finches are often layered strips.  The speaker then widens his example to include even the “[l]andscape” or the farmers’ fields that the farmer has “plotted and pieced” in order to plough and “fold” or allow to lie “fallow.”  

    He finds those patterns to be offering the glory that all “dappled” things offer; thus, he honors them by mentioning them as an example. In fact, every commercial endeavor deserves a nod along with the instruments, their tools, which he refers to as “gear,” “tackle,” and “trim.”

    Third Movement:  The Spice of Variety

     All things counter, original, spare, strange;

    In the second stanza, beginning with the third movement, the speaker shifts from simple  spotted, multi-colored things to everything remaining that runs against expectation, or that is original and unique, or things that seem simple, and things that appear odd.

    Because creation seems to offer an infinite number of styles, patterns, and ways of being, the speaker now wishes to praise God and glorify the Divine Maker by recognizing the Creator’s penchant for variety. 

    If the old adage “variety is the spice of life” possesses any truth, then certainly the Heavenly Father-God is responsible for the creation of those spices.  This speaker thus widens his scope for gratitude.

    Fourth Movement:  Things That Change

     Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
          With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

    The speaker then offers further elucidation for the other components that make up his glossary of things that deserve attention and appreciation because of their having been offered to humankind by the Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Creator of the cosmos.

    So the speaker reports that all things, beings, creatures that possess the quality of fickleness or changeability belong to his list of things that honor and give glory to God.  Even “freckled” things, of which no one can define the origin, belong to this category.

    Those “fickle” and “freckled” things all have several qualities in common; thus, they may exist and behave with speed or move measuredly.   They may possess the opposite flavors of sweetness or sourness.  Some may also reflect light blazingly while others remain muted and subdued.

    Regardless of the unique qualities, they are all part of the Blessèd Creator’s offerings to His children for their pleasure or for their edification or to light whatever pathway they are destined to follow.

    Fifth Movement:  That Which Does not Change

    He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                    Praise him.

    The speaker then concludes with a command—”Praise him.”  In the beginning, he made it clear that he was offering all glory to God for the things He has given through creation. Now he offers his stern command, but before that command, he offers the reason that such praise is due Him. 

    The Father of all this beauty continues, and although He Himself is “past change” or without the necessity to change Himself, He continues to offer through creation a beauty that is many faceted, multi-colored, multi-stippled, and brindled. And all things remain on a spectrum that humankind cannot duplicate but is surely obligated to honor, appreciate, and glorify in the name of Father God.

  • Original Song:  “River Spirit” and Prose Commentary

    Image: “Whitewater River Songs – Album Cover” Photo by Ron W. G.

    Original Song:  “River Spirit” and Prose Commentary

    I wrote “River Spirit” circa 1980 then made a homemade recording of it around 20 around 2004.  In 2023, my husband Ron—whom I call “My Sweet Ron”—created the video featuring his own photos and videos selections along with the song.  

    Introduction to and Lyric of “River Spirit”

    The lyric of “River Spirit” plays out in four stanzas of tercets, with one couplet appearing as the second stanza.  It sports no traditional rime-scheme but does offer one set of perfect rime in “hand/sand” in the second and third lines.  Other slant—or more accurately ghost rimes—appear in “water/before” in the couplet.

    Ghost rimes also make an appearance with “bed/edge” and “changes/images.”  The time frame begins in spring, as the singer begins to report what she sees along the river after the cold hard season of winter has given way to the warmth of spring.

    The theme of the song is the mystery the singer feels at seeing that the landscape along the river has been radically transformed from what she had observed during the summer before this transforming winter had its sway.  The singer poses questions about how the trees got uprooted and the path along the river has shifted, as even the stones are taking on new patterns.

    The singer then announces what she had thought to be the agent of the transformations; however, she is ultimately revealing—in the title—that what she “guessed” back in the day, she now knows to be the work of the Divine Reality, the “River Spirit”—or God (see “Names for the Ineffable God”).

    (Please note:  Dr. Samuel Johnson introduced the form “rhyme” into English in the 18th century, mistakenly thinking that the term was a Greek derivative of “rythmos.”  Thus “rhyme” is an etymological error. For my explanation for using only the original form “rime,” please see “Rime vs Rhyme: Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Error.”)

    River Spirit

    Every spring along the Whitewater River
    I saw that some mysterious hand
    Had rearranged the rocks and sand.

    The path I followed the summer before
    Was slipping off into the water.
    I could not figure out whose force
    Could drive that water among the reeds
    & shift the river in its bed

    Whose muscles uprooted those trees?
    Whose fingers patterned those stones
    Along the edge?  

    I guessed only that the spring thaw
    Conjured up the changes
    In those sleeping river images.

    Commentary on “River Spirit”

    The time frame is spring, as the singer begins to muse on what she observes along the river after the cold, hard season of winter has given way to the warmth of spring.  Her earlier guess about that riverbank rearrangement has now become an article of faith, and she proclaims in the title the answer to her earlier inquiry.

    First Movement:  The Hand of Mystery

    Every spring along the Whitewater River
    I saw that some mysterious hand
    Had rearranged the rocks and sand.

    The singing narrator launches right into her story by making the claim that she observed a change in the pattern of stones and sand along the river’s edge, and she make this observation “every spring.”  She had thus a recollection of having experiences these changes many times.

    She colorfully attributes those rearrangements to “some mysterious hand.”  At this point, it may sound a bit odd that a river walker would think a hand had been involved in what went on along the riverbank in her absence.

    Second Movement:  River Features Shifting

    The path I followed the summer before
    Was slipping off into the water.

    After setting the stage for mystery and rearrangement of river features, the singer offers a very specific change.  She had walk along a path during the preceding summer, and now that path simply veered off into the river water.  Such a change would likely be quite jarring for the hiker, who would necessarily be obliged to alter her walking pattern.

    Third Movement:  Puzzling over the Changes 

    I could not figure out whose force
    Could drive that water among the reeds
    & shift the river in its bed

    The singer now inserts her puzzlement.  She becomes curious as to how such changes could have occurred.  She sees that the river has now shifted its course, plunging into the reeds along the bank.

    The mere fact of the river shifting “in its bed” seems Herculean in prospect.  The river is such a large body of moving water that the notion of it shifting surely requires a force that strikes the singer an unimaginable at this point.

    Fourth Movement:  Who Made Those Changes?

    Whose muscles uprooted those trees?
    Whose fingers patterned those stones
    Along the edge?  

    The singer then again adds more specificity to her inquiry.  She sees that trees have been “uprooted,” and she observes that the stones along the river’s edge have been rearranged in a different pattern from the summer before.

    Again, she colorfully attributes those “changes” to a seemingly human agency of “muscles” and “fingers.”  But behind those specific agents must lie some metaphysical force that at this point the singer cannot name, cannot even offer a guess about.

    Fifth Movement:  Guessing at the Conjuring

    I guessed only that the spring thaw
    Conjured up the changes
    In those sleeping river images.

    Now the singer offers what she thought to be an answer to her inquiry: Well, it was likely that not any hands, muscles, or fingers enforced all of these changes; it was simply the process of thawing out from the ice during the warming movements brought on by spring.

    Sure, that’s it: the spring movements of thawing influenced those inert river features to alter themselves into differing patterns from the summer before.  What else could it be?  But the singer is understating what she really believes now.  She “guessed” about the “spring thaw”—but that was then, this is now.

    Thus the singer through anthropomorphic images of hands, muscles, fingers has proclaimed that a humanlike power has, in fact, mades these changes.  Not an actual human being on its own however.  But some power that retains in its Being the image of the human form, power,  and ingenuity.

    Simply, the title of the lyric has already stated what the singer pretends to guess about as she unfurls the song:  God (as the “River Spirit”) has performed His magic on these “sleeping river images.” God has “conjured up” those alterations in those river images as they moved from a frozen, winter sleep to vital spring time awakening.

  • Original Song:  “I Wonder if You Ever Think of Me” and Commentary

    Image:  “Winter Melancholy” Irca & Jacky K.

    Original Song:  “I Wonder if You Ever Think of Me” and Commentary

    I wrote this song about 40 years ago, made a homemade studio recording of it about 20 years ago.  Recently, my husband Ron created a video using his own photos and videos selections featuring the song.  

    Introduction, the Lyric, and the Video

    The lyric of “I Wonder if You Ever Think of Me” displays in four cinquains and one single line, which concludes the lyric by repeating the chorus-like line, transforming the title from wondering to knowing.  The time frame runs from winter to the beginning of spring, with the singer signaling “snow” in the opening line and concluding with winter having turned to spring.

    The song follows a lost-love theme, which therefore relies on melancholic images such as “gray sky” in the opening cinquain, “bare branch” in the second, “wind is blowing cold” in the third, “empty house” in the final stanza.  Despite the theme of melancholy and the lost-love subject, the rendition maintains a rather fast paced rhythm, which allows room for interpretation regarding the depth of the sorrow that appears to be elucidated.

    I Wonder if You Ever Think of Me

    Now the snow is on the ground.
    I walk through the yard.
    Your footsteps I can’t find.
    Gray sky is pressing me down,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    Light through my window comes late.
    I stand and I watch
    Bare branch against the sky.
    I take a walk down by the bridge,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    Outside the wind is blowing cold.
    My heart beats fast
    To think you may be near.
    I walk back to my bed,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    Night turns to day, winter to spring.
    I walk down the road,
    My dog my only friend.
    I walk back to the empty house,
    And I guess I know you never think of me.

    I guess I know you never think of me.

    Commentary on “I Wonder if You Ever Think of Me”

    What may at first blush seem to be a “lost-love” theme filled with sorrow and foreboding can be understood in actuality as quite the opposite—an affirmation of the efficacy of musing, ruminating, and clear-eyed observation.

    First Cinquain:  Beginning a Winter Tale 

    Now the snow is on the ground.
    I walk through the yard.
    Your footsteps I can’t find.
    Gray sky is pressing me down,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    The singer begins to set the stage by revealing the season of the year in which she is making her musing.  “Snow” likely says, it is winter time.  A cold beginning foreshadows the mood of the piece as the singer wonders if the addressee ever thinks of her. Before revealing what she is wondering, she adds two details that set her glum mood. 

    The sky is gray and causing her mood to be low and likely sad, but more likely the detail responsible for her mood is that she cannot see the footprints of the addressee in the snow. That a natural phenomenon of the gray sky accompanying the lack of footprints of a likely lost loved one is wholly understandable.  Human emotion often tinges the nature of  things surrounding it.

    Second Cinquain: Bare Branch and Gray Sky Compound the Melancholy

    Light through my window comes late.
    I stand and I watch
    Bare branch against the sky.
    I take a walk down by the bridge,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    The singer then reveals that she is looking out a window and the sun seems to have delayed its arrival that morning, as it is coming late.  She continues to stand at the window looking out at the winter branches on the trees; they are, of course, bare, having experienced the autumn season that preceded the current time frame.  The “bare branch” is set “against the sky,” revealing another detail of the melancholy which the singer is experiencing.  Bare branches are not considered to be as beautiful as branches full of leaves as in spring and summer.  

    It has already been revealed that the sky is “gray,” and thus the coupling a gray sky and bare branch work together the compound the melancholy mood of the singer.  The singer is then on the move; she walks down to the bridge.  She then repeats the chant-like refrain of wondering if the addressee thinks of her.  Likely the walk was intended to mitigate the melancholy of her wondering, but it has not helped thus she repeats her refrain.

    Third Cinquain:  A Fantastic Interlude

    Outside the wind is blowing cold.
    My heart beats fast
    To think you may be near.
    I walk back to my bed,
    And I wonder if you ever think of me.

    Instead of supplying any detail of the walk back to her house, the singer just suddenly places herself there as she notices that a cold wind is rustling “outside.”  The singer’s continued attempt to mitigate her painful wondering causes her mind to become jerked about, leaving out details that her listeners might want to have as they try to follow her narrative. 

    Again, the speaker adds an important detail that remains otherworldly; her heart begins to beat fast because the thought has arisen that, in fact, the addressee may actually “be near”—not just in her thought but in physical reality.  But instead of rushing to window to look to see if that nearness is likely, she simply “walk[s] back to [her] bed.”  Again, her refrain becomes dominant as she “wonder[s] if [the addressee] ever thinks of [her].”

    Fourth Cinquain:  Winter Bleeds into Spring

    Night turns to day, winter to spring.
    I walk down the road,
    My dog my only friend.
    I walk back to the empty house,
    And I guess I know you never think of me.

    Quite a bit of time has passed from the time frame of the first three cinquains; it is now spring.  But the singer conflates the changing of the season with nighttime turning to daytime.  Her mind is on the passage of time.  Time is supposed to possess a healing power.  Observing the changing of temporal phenomena may become part of the healing process.   

    But now the singer reveals that she is on the move again; this time she is simply taking a walk “down the road” and she is accompanied by her dog.  She confides that her dog is her “only friend.”  Thus her listener can be assured that she is still alone, still missing the addressee, even before she reveals that her house is still empty.  Again, the refrain of wondering if the addressee thinks of her becomes a final or near final expression.  She has continued to wonder as she wandered from winter to spring, as night becomes day, as she strolls about with or without her dog friend, and as she has continued to observe the things around her.

    Final Single Line:  The Return of Harmony and Balance

    I guess I know you never think of me.

    The final single line reveals that the singer has reached a conclusion.  She now knows that the addressee does not ever think of her.  She does not reveal explicitly how she knows that, but she has made it clear the she has cogitated on the issue for at least a whole season.  She began in winter time observing the absence of the addresses by the absence of footprints in the snow. She strolled through the yard, she strolled down the bridge, and she stood at her window watching as night turned to day and one season bled into another.

    The listener can then easily assume that as the singer did all of these things, she was musing, turning over in her mind details about the relationship with the addressee.  Thus with all of this musing and cogitation, she has reached the conclusive answer to the question, and it is no, the addressee never thinks of her. 

    The fast pace of the song reveals a certain mood of affirmation despite the melancholy that many of the images impart.  The singer has therefore not composed a dirge but a hymn to the importance of musing, cogitation, and observation.  The human heart may be persuaded to lighten if the mind of the observer remains focused on achieving balance and harmony.