A Sabbath Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pied Beauty
-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 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.

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book “Earth Prayers,” a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers.

I rise in anticipation of greeting you God, and I walk with your presence in mind, but the day races relentlessly towards me, and the time gets harder to find. The relationship I seek and long for, seems to traitorously slip away, while duties, obligations and labor, begin to fill up my day.

So noontime I think, will be time to pause, to commune with the Savior I love, and then lunch comes, and it goes, and I still haven't paused to worship the Almighty above. As evening approaches and the sun sets in the sky, and the quiet of night settles in, I think the end of the day will open the way to let my prayer time begin.

Then my head hits the pillow in exhaustion once more, I feel drained yet fitfully sleep, both body and soul deficient somehow because of the meeting I failed to keep.

You have given us a gift of Sabbath Rest, a gift I repeatedly choose to ignore. Yet when I seek your face, and dwell in you my life is so much more. You offer us time and grace and love, a respite from life's demanding drive.  So let me absorb the refreshment of Sabbath, so I may truly thrive.