Some things bright and beautiful

This week the season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ finally seems to have arrived. Whilst walking in the woods, Oscar and I have noted the changing colours, acorns constantly dropping around us and a particularly good harvest of chestnuts.

The chestnuts have also caught the attention of our growing Parakeet population and one evening last week I witnessed a flock of fifty fly over our house. These bright green arrivals with their vivid red bills and high pitched call do tend to divide public opinion. Indeed last week I read that, whilst currently protected, in future people will be able to apply for a licence to shoot ‘problem parakeets’; so much for all things bright and beautiful!

The poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins had a few things to say about such colourful wildlife. I am guessing that he probably never saw a Himalayan Parakeet but I can’t help wondering whether he might have welcomed their arrival? Whilst we may not want to thank God for this particular species, autumn nevertheless remains a vivid season to praise God for pied beauty…

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.

Pied Beauty
Gaerard Manley Hopkins

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