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About this quote

What does it mean?
The poet praises God for creating varied and patterned natural things like multicolored skies and spotted fish.
In plain terms
God is praised for making beautiful spotted and colorful things in nature.
What can you take from it?
Variety and pattern in nature reflect divine glory.

Where it applies

  • religious contemplation
  • nature appreciation

Putting it to work

  • appreciating natural patterns
  • connecting nature to faith

Questions to consider

  • How does nature show glory?
  • What patterns do you see?

Another view

It attributes natural complexity solely to divine will.

More from Gerard Manley Hopkins

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  2. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose…

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  3. Nothing is so beautiful as Spring- When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing…

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