Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hi Dear Folk,

A hush has engulfed the world, song birds are singing more, air quality is good, and animals are walking in places never trod by them before.  Water is running clean in the canals of Venice.  As the French say "pas un aperçu de chat" not a cat insight.

Despite sickness and horror a strange beauty, spaces empty, silent.

"All things counter, original, spare, strange."

Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Written 1877

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 áll trádes, 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.