From my book A Calendar of Classic Prayer, a poem-cum-prayer from the renowned Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, exulting in the beauty of creation.
Introduction
These are perhaps the best-known and most loved lines that Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) ever composed. They come from the poem ‘Pied Beauty’, which celebrates the beauty of creation and everything this communicates to us of God. The poem is all the more remarkable for the fact that Hopkins experienced frequent bouts of depression during his life coupled with increasingly poor health. It’s clear from his words here, however, that the joy brought by his faith far outweighed such moments – a joy exemplified by what, reputedly, were his last words: ‘I am so happy! I am so happy!’
Pray
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 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.