Dappled Things

is a blog by Father Jim Tucker of the Diocese of Arlington.

We should be especially thankful for this lovely and thoughtful blog. Too few priests reach their ministerial arms into the blogosphere.

The title of his blog comes from the famous poem "Pied Beauty" by the 19th century Jesuit 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 all trades, 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.