Tall Country Spires And High Rises

On one of my favorite daily walking routes my eyes are drawn upward to tall things on and around the nearby Bender farm. On the left is the radio tower that serves a major part of the County, and on the hill north of the farm is one of the water towers for the city of Harrisonburg. Then there are the seven grain bins and several utility poles in the foreground. And all around are tall oak, maple, walnut and a variety of other stately trees, habitat for deer and all manner of wildlife.

And oh the sky, a forever expanse wedding earth to heaven!

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 trádes, 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.

Pied Beauty, by English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-89