Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

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.

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From In Memoriam (Part XLV)
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

The baby new to earth and sky,
   What time his tender palm is prest
   Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‛this is I.’

But as he grows he gathers much,
   And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’
   And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’

So rounds he to a separate mind
   From whence clear memory may begin,
   As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.

This use may lie in blood and breath,
   Which else were fruitless of their due,
   Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.

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Nightingales
by Robert Bridges (1844-1930)

   Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
   And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams wherefrom
             Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
   Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
            Bloom the year long!

   Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
   Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
            A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
   No dying cadence, nor long sigh can sound,
            For all our art.

   Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
   We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
            As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
   Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
            Welcome the dawn.

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The Green River
by Alfred Douglas (1870-1945)

I know a green grass path that leaves the field
   And, like a running river, winds along
   Into a leafy wood, where is no throng
Of birds at noon-day; and no soft throats yield
Their music to the moon. The place is sealed,
   An unclaimed sovereignty of voiceless song,
   And all the unravished silences belong
To some sweet singer lost, or unrevealed.

So is my soul become a silent place…
   Oh, may I wake from this uneasy night
      To find some voice of music manifold.
Let it be shape of sorrow with wan face,
   Or love that swoons on sleep, or else delight
      That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.

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