By Bernie Bell

I checked the Ness of Brodgar dig diary, as I do, and this is what I saw………….

https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/dig-diary-thursday-august-1-2019/

I’m not allowed to use the picture, so, do, please take a look at the dig diary entry, for yourselves.

When I saw that mace-head – here’s what came into my head…………..

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Oh, yes!

And – PLEASE  PLEASE  PLEASE donate, to help to keep this dig going, and beauty being shared, through time, through the world.