The poet begins the poem by glorifying God for all of the wonderful, natural things, and he also finishes the poem in the same way, by praising Him for the imperfectly great things that he had listed above. The poet talks of his admiration for everything, even the man-made things and the things that may be considered. In the last line, the poem also becomes an apology for the things that may normally not be thought beautiful or valued. The poem is almost a celebration of the diversity of God’s creation.
The poem is set out in a loose, ladder-like structure, which gives off the effect of diversity and builds up towards the end of the poem where the poet simply says ‘Praise Him.’ The poet uses dashes, which indicates that he is going to list the things he admires of God’s creations. Within these lists, the poet uses semi-colons, which show a change and contrast in subject of the many different things that there are to admire.
The use of the simile ‘couple-coloured as brinded cows’ show the mottled white and blue colours of the sky, the “brinded” skin of a cow emphasises the effect of the many different things that there are to admire about God’s creation. The poet then moves into the sentence ‘For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;’ which then emphasises the patches of contrasting soft pink, speckled dotted colours on a trout, compared to the streaks of blues and whites in the sky, and the browns on a cow. Next, the poet moves onto compare the ’fresh-fire coal chestnut-falls’ and the ‘finches’ wings’. This also emphasises the admiration of all of the many different things that God has made, seeing as when the chestnuts fall they open to reveal the meaty interior normally concealed by a hard shell; they are compared to the coals in a fire, which are black on the outside and glowing within, whereas the wings of finches are multi-coloured and complex. The final example is of the “trades” and activities of man, with the diversity of