Hopkins's speaker spends a good deal of time providing images of physical or visual contrast in the first stanza of his poem. However, in the second stanza he moves beyond the merely visual to encompass the differences between "all things." He turns specifically to the imagery of movement by mentioning the contrasts of "swift, slow" and to the imagery of taste in things "sweet, sour."

Hopkins focuses on the visual imagery of contrast because we are a visual culture, and also because the imagery of visual contrast communicates the idea that contrast is beautiful. In fact, it is in the visual contrast of light and shadows, in the contrast of colors that spots or dappling creates, that beauty and variety emerge. Hopkins's larger point is that contrasts create a harmony in which the whole is all the more beautiful because the differences work together to provide texture and variety.

The main point, however, that Hopkins, a priest, is trying to make is that, paradoxically, all this changeable play of visual beauty, motion, taste, and the contrast in "all things" emanate from a God who is himself unchanging: