Pied Beauty (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins
- First Published: 1918
- Type of Work: Sonnet
- Genres: Poetry, Sonnet
- Subjects: Creation myth, God, Beauty, Farms, farmers, or farming, Birds, Animals, Aesthetics, Fishes, Sky
The Poem
“Pied Beauty” is a rhymed “curtal” (shortened) sonnet divided into two stanzas, consisting of three full tercets and a truncated fourth. The title refers to the variegated beauty of the world that first may appear ugly or chaotic. Though “pied” suggests at least two tones or colors, it also suggests a blotched or botched effect, as when in an earlier era, a printer spilled a galley of set type, creating a printer’s “pie.”
Though traditional sonnets are fourteen lines, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his experiments with poetic form, line, and meter,...
[The entire page is 1582 words long]
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