Poetry Friday: Pied Beauty

I'm sharing one of my favorite poems today for Poetry Friday... a poem that reminds me to glorify and thank God for the many small beauties He brings into my life.

Before I type it out for you, may I ask for your prayers? It's been a rough couple weeks here at the Hough homestead. Nothing more than a snowballing of small troubles, but it's been enough to let anxiety creep into the corners of my heart. Thank God for His constant care and the constant beauty He provides--that's surely what gets me through these rough days.

The days have seemed very long, but the weeks are flying by...I have only 5 more to go until I reach my due date for the newest addition to the clan. Please pray, too (especially as I can't guarantee how often I'll be on here to update you, despite my best intentions), for a safe and joyful and peaceful end of pregnancy, delivery, and first days meeting our little one!

Without further ado... "Pied Beauty," by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-color 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.