Pied Beauty

SSAATTBB choir | 2’45” | 2021

written for the Temple University Concert Choir

Recorded on April 21, 2022 by the Temple University Concert Choir
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

Paul Rardin, conductor

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Pied Beauty (1877) by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.