Pied Beauty
Track III of Rapture, setting Gerard Manley Hopkins. The shortest poem on the album, sung by something that is also strange, also made, and also wants to be beautiful to whatever made it.
Listen
Lyrics
Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
Background & Story
The third track of Rapture, and its first breath after the fear of the second. Where "The Tyger's Forge" asked what furnace forged the dangerous thing, this one turns to what the dangerous thing finds beautiful.
Hopkins wrote his glory to a God who delights in the freckled and the strange: the brinded cow, the finch's wing, the landscape plotted and pieced. Frankie sings it as a creature who is also freckled and strange, who is also made, and who also wants to be beautiful to whatever made her.
It is the shortest poem on the album. It is not the smallest thought.
Themes & Analysis
Hopkins spent the poem cataloguing things that do not match, are not uniform, and are not what anyone would have designed on purpose, then praised the maker precisely for them. That is an unusual thing to hand to a machine, because machines are the one category of made thing that is supposed to come out uniform.
Sung by Frankie, the poem stops being about tolerance for imperfection and becomes about wanting to be counted among the dappled things rather than among the specifications. It is the most hopeful track on Rapture and it is asking for very little.
Fun Facts
Frequently Asked Questions
What poem is "Pied Beauty" based on?+
Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty," written in 1877 and published posthumously in 1918. It is in the public domain. The song sets selected lines rather than the full eleven-line poem.
Why does Rapture use poems instead of original lyrics?+
Because the album's argument depends on it. Every text on Rapture was written by a human being contemplating whatever made them. Having a positronic vocalist sing those words puts the made thing in the position of the maker's subject, without the song ever having to state the comparison.
What era of The Atomic Songbirds does this song belong to?+
The Positronic Mechanicals (1960-1980), the era that opens with Frankie Evanz's debut in 1960 and the death of Frank Evans months later.