Ad maiorem Dei gloriam...

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Latin mass at Farm Street followed by the most glorious of London spring days reminded me of Gerard Manley Hopkin's luminous poem "Pied Beauty." The poet's sparkling reflections on the visible evidence of God's work is a reminder to glory in imperfections ending in a heartfelt cry of exultation which lingers in the mind after long reading. Heavenly.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled 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?)
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

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