Pied Beauty of the Guppy

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Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Victorian poet and devout Catholic, probably never heard of guppies, although they had been recently discovered. So guppies do not show up in his great sonnet to the act of creation, although he does include the freshwater fish, the trout, and its patches of contrasting colors, in his catalog of dappled things.

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, 1877

Hopkins lived in an authoritarian age where conformity to social and religious standards was dictated from above. The high priests of his culture were threatened by his embrace of natural beauty and diversity. His poem is a protest against conformity to brittle and dry ideologies that separate man from nature.

I think Hopkins would have loved dappled guppy beauty, with its fickle and freckled patterns, blue guppies mottled white and blue like the colors of the sky, brindled Panda guppies in black and white, or the shimmering iridescent colors of Metal Heads. So let's praise guppy beauty in all its forms, the sleek German Vienna Emerald swordtail or roundtail, the Thai halfmoon Full Platinum, the Japanese Blue Grass or the American Half-Black Red.They are all beautiful in their own right.

Guppy standards have their place in the hobby as surely as the farmer in his ploughed fields, plotted and pieced. But let's praise the creative power of those guppy breeders who celebrate the diverse and chaotic beauty of nature with dappled guppies that meet nobody's standard for beauty.

Hopkins may not have been thinking of guppies when he wrote his famous poem, but let it inspire a new generation of guppy breeders to father-forth guppies whose beauty is past change.

Comments  

 
0 #1 Villads 2010-11-03 01:56
Thank you for showing this wonderful poem, and thank you for once again forcing me to learn lots of new english words. :lol:
I am inspired. :-)
Villads
 
 
0 #2 admin 2010-11-04 18:42
Villads, you are welcome. This is one of my favorite poems. How appropriate for the guppy whose fame rests on its diversity of form and color.
 
 
0 #3 fan4guppy 2010-11-06 21:44
The immense coloration and beauty is within every guppy and more is learned every day by those that dedicate themselves to the genetics of these creatures. Many do not comprehend the magnitude of the Guppy and from where these breeders have developed strains featuring colors and fin shapes. However Philip I agree with you there is beauty in every fish and standards seem to make it just more manipulated on a judging panel where as every strain deserves its due in the wonderful world of Guppies :)
 

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