Pied Beauty

Pied Beauty

  • Submitted By: paku
  • Date Submitted: 12/17/2008 4:47 AM
  • Category: Miscellaneous
  • Words: 589
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 1047

Pied Beauty.

Hopkins presents his poem to us in a most unusual way. The first thing one notices is the odd language used: dappled, couple-colour, pied, brinded etc. Along with that we come to realize that all of these words have the same meaning, which is to be of different shades, colours. This use of language makes the poem sound even more interesting to read as the words themselves are colourful. Thematically, the poem seems to be a song-like praise to God for the “dappled things” of creation. Hopkins appreciates and bows down to God for all of His beautiful and striking creations He has strewn around the world - it’s as though he is picturing God as an artist and His creations a painted canvas board.

Since this poem praises the infinite variety of colour, patterns and shades, the imagery portrayed is vivid and vibrant. For example, “Fresh - firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings”. He compresses so many different ideas together. With the imagery an unusual and striking picture forms in the mind of the readers making them think about how exactly a peculiar image like that can be formed. ‘Fresh - firecoal makes us think of the brightness of new chestnuts when they fall from the trees, looking as though they are lit with fire from within. Hopkins even makes a plain black and white animal like a cow seem rich in color, “For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow”. This line also emphasizes the juxtaposition used, the poet compares one of the highest to one of the lowest creations on this earth to tell us exactly how far God’s wonderful creations exist. Another method the poet uses is a moving picture. This can be seen in the line “for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim”. The words ‘trout’ and ‘swim’ give us the picture of water and fish swimming in it but the words “rose-moles”, to me, suggest that the water is not just any regular sea water but is perhaps ‘rose’ water and the word ‘stipple’ rhymes and is similar to the word...

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