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 pierced -- fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, 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. -- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) A native of England, the eldest of nine children in a High Anglican family, Gerard Manley HOPKINS is one of the great unsung poets who was virtually unknown in his lifetime. We have his poetry only because it was collected and published in 1918 after his death. HOPKINS came to Ireland in 1884, and was professor of Classics, University College, Dublin. He lived for a time in Wales, where he learned Welsh. He was a convert to Catholicism from the Church of England and served variously as preacher, parish priest, and a professor of Greek and Latin. He was a frequent visitor to the CASSIDY family of Monasterevin House, in Co. Kildare.