We All Need Poetry In Our Lives!

I'm a firm believer that poetry is something we all need more of in our lives. To that end, I will occasionally post a poem I personally find valuable or which has made a lasting impression on me. Your comments/responses are, as always, welcome!

The first is one I dearly love, because I love nature and the God Who created nature--and few poets have better summarized the beauty of nature than Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).

This is his poem, "Pied Beauty"--about spotted things! Listen for the rise and fall of the words, and for the way the endings of the words punctuate his thoughts with enthusiasm! Poetry doesn't have to be all "high-brow"--it's simple stuff, really, the best of it usually written by fairly common people about the most mundane subjects--and yet with the power to elevate our thinking and cause us to see what is to be seen, rather than to assume!
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PIED BEAUTY

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 áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;

Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)

With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise Hím.

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How much I love the world God has created...any how much I wish that I had first had the idea to stop and give thanks for things that are spotted and blotched and freckled! What a wonderful prayer life a man has, when he can stop and say "Thank You, Lord, for making things spotted!"