Glory!

Gerard Manley Hopkins' evocative poem "Pied Beauty" came into my mind when I saw this blazing leaf on our vine maple tree:

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.

Freespiral also has a Hopkins poem accompanying her classic autumn scene -- perhaps reading that earlier today, another connection, was what triggered my memory of a poem I've loved for years.

(Listen to "Pied Beauty" on the Poetry Foundation website.)