HOPKINS’ PIED BEAUTY: A CRITICAL ANANLYSIS

Dr. Prabhavati A. Patil

Abstract: Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest is one of
the most individual of Victorian writers. He is regarded as one the Victorian
era’s greatest poets. Hopkins is a sensuous poet and a Roman Catholic priest.
His poetry bears the unmistakable stamp of his poetic sensibility and
devotional fervour. Hopkins completed "Pied Beauty" in 1877. The London
firm of Humphrey S. Milford published it in 1918 in Poems of Gerard Manley
Hopkins. The poem moves from nominal to clausal syntax, from simple to
complex modification, and invents a device to create sets of higher
cardinality.
Key- Words: Hopkins, Pied Beauty, Poetic Concentration.
Introduction: Gerard Manley Hopkins, 19th century poet and priest is
admired for the highly original use of rhythm in his poetry. He was an ardent
believer in God and in the divinity of Christ. "Pied Beauty" is a lyric poem
praising God for his variegated creation. Nature in its variety--including
streaked, spotted, and multicolored skies, fields, nuts, fish, birds, and other
animals--is a gift of God for which we all should be thankful. One may
interpret this theme to include human beings, with their many personalities,
moods, idiosyncrasies, occupations, cultures, languages, political systems, skin
colors and other physical attributes, and so on.
Pied Beauty: Theme: “Pied Beauty” points to Hopkins’ power of sensuous
appreciation of the beauty of the things around, his poetic concentration,
compassion and above all, his unquestioning faith in God. He believes that the
created beauty is the reflections of God’s spirit. The Christian concept of God
as love and protector is vividly expressed in the last two lines;
“He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him”.
The very expression “Pied Beauty” means multi-coloured beauty of things.
The multi-coloured beauty of things with their ever changing (shifting) colour
and forms is very much pleasing to the poet. But the realization that they all
are the manifestations of the beauty and grace of the supreme creator feels his
heart with wonder and admiration.
The sky of couple colour brings the association spotted cows. The trouts
that swim have on them rose-spot on dots beautifully distributed. The chest
nuts that falling from the trees is bright red in colour like glowing coal in a
fire. The landscapes and sky-scapes are ever alike; the lands being in plots and
pieces and the sky ever changing its colour.
Though God has created this ever changing and constantly shifting
panorama around us he himself is past change. He who with paternal affection
and crashing tenderness has created things of bewildering diversity is himself
subject to no change. He has created some contrasting things such as –
swiftness and slowness, sweetness and sourness, dazzle and dimness.
Thus the poet concludes his poem with an invitation to all, to praise the
glory and grace of God.
The Title of the Poem: According to Hopkins’s theory of inscape, all living
things have a constantly shifting design or pattern that gives each object a
unique identity. Hopkins frequently uses colour to describe these inscapes.
“Pied Beauty” praises God for giving every object a distinct visual pattern,
from sunlight as multicoloured as a cow, to the beauty of birds’ wings and
freshly ploughed fields. Indeed, the word pied means “having splotches of two
or more colours.”
The word "pied" in the title means spotted (or, if you prefer, dappled).
This entire poem is in praise of things with spots, from trout to cows to the
way the skies have spots of cloud or the fields, which are compared to a quilt:
"Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow and plough".
The first six lines give examples of the pied things for which Hopkins is
offering thanks; the second stanza (of four and one half lines) expands to
thank the Lord for all of the things that might fit within this category. The
second stanza is ambiguous : is Hopkins telling all those things that are
freckled, fickle, etc. to praise God, or is he praising God for having made them?
Structure of "Pied Beauty":
Hopkins, called the poem a curtal sonnet, meaning a shortened or
contracted sonnet. A curtal sonnet consists of eleven lines instead of the usual
fourteen for the standard Shakespearean or Petrarchan Sonnet. Besides, "Pied
Beauty" may also be classified as catalogue verse because it presents a thesis
followed by a list of examples (catalogue) that support the thesis.
Hopkins begins and ends the poem with a call to praise God for the gifts
He has given us. Between these calls, he presents two short lists and a
comment about the beauty of God. The first list uses concrete and specific
language (skies, the cow, trout, chestnuts, finches, and farm fields); the second
list, abstract and general language (things counter, original, spare, strange,
fickle, etc.). The comment notes that the beauty of God, unlike the beauty of
creation, does not change. Thus, Hopkins structures the poem as follows:
1. A call to praise God for his gifts.
2. A list of gifts in specific language.
3. A list of gifts in abstract language.
4. A comment about the immutable beauty of God.
5. A call to praise God.
Meter of "Pied Beauty": Sprung Rhythm:
The meter of "Pied Beauty" is sprung rhythm, a term coined by Hopkins
to describe a metric format that permits an unlimited number of unstressed
syllables in each line to accompany stressed syllables. A metric foot in sprung
rhythm usually contains one to four syllables. Hopkins intended sprung
rhythm to mimic the stresses occurring in ordinary English speech.
Hopkins has achieved the inscape through sound-sculpting with devices
such as alliteration, assonance – “With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle
dim” and through his sprung rhythm. This Sprung rhythm has been Hopkins’
special contribution to Modern Poetry. This rhythm approximated the natural
rhythm of speech through rolling stresses, without sacrificing poetic
rhythmicity; making it a fusion of what Hopkins called “markedness of rhythm
and naturalness of expression”. In this rhythm the focus is on accents or
stresses without much care about the number of syllables. A foot may have
one strong syllable which could be accompanied by many light ones. For
example, in the line – “For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim”, there
is stress falling only on ‘rose’, ‘all’ and ‘trout’ such that it cannot be scanned
conventionally.
Rhyme of "Pied Beauty":
The rhyme scheme of the poem is as follows:
Lines 1-6: ABCABC
Lines 7-10: DBDC
Line 11: C
Tone of "Pied Beauty":
The tone is exuberant and spirited. The poem is a song of joy.
Figures of Speech:
Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem.
Alliteration:
Line 1: Glory be to God
Line 2: skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow
Line 4: Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches
Line 5: Landscape plotted and pieced
Line 6: trádes, their gear and tackle and trim
Line 7: spare, strange
Line 9: swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim
Line10: He fathers-forth whose
Anaphora:
Lines 2 and 3: For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Paradox:
Line 9: things that are swift and slow
...........things that are sweet and sour
...........things that are dazzling and dim
Simile:
Lines 2: skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow
Comparison of skies to a cow
Metaphor:
Line 3: rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Comparison of the spots on a speckled trout to moles
Line 4: Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls
Comparison of chestnut kernels to burning coals
Line 10: suckled in a creed outworn
Comparison of creed to a mother nursing her child
Conclusions: For Hopkins, God is the careful painter mixing and matching,
putting all into a whole. Though individual details are striking, unusual,
unique, or even initially ugly, the overall effect is one of massive pattern,
reiterated by the echo of the word “all” at the end of one stanza and beginning
of the next. God’s Creation is beautiful as there is variety and contrast. As a
religious man, Hopkins turns his attention to the specific qualities of nature.
He wants the reader to see things as they really are and to praise them
because they are God’s creation.
References:
 Ed. W. H. Gardner, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose, Penguin
1953.
 Ed. Catherine Phillips, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Poetry, Oxford
1996.
 ed. Peter Feeney, G. M. Hopkins: Selected Poems, Oxford 2006.
 F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry, 1932.
 ed. G. H. Hartman, Hopkins, C20 Views, Prentice-Hall 1966.
 Gerald Roberts, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Literary Life, Palgrave
Macmillan 1994/2006.