"Pied Beauty" is a hymn that is sung in nature instead of
church. The setting is the English countryside. Some nature
poems describe the exotic, such as jungles, mountains, and other
varieties of wilderness. The landscape of this poem is decidedly
domesticated. Instead of tigers, dense trees, and rushing
waterfalls, we have cows, trout, chestnuts, and birds. The land
is divided into "plots and pieces" for farming (line 5). Still,
humans don't dominate the scene or stick out in any particular
way. Humans don't control nature – they are an important part of
nature, and the variety of their jobs is compared to the variety
of colors on a trout or a bird's wings. But they do not dominate
nature. Most important for "Pied Beauty," the landscape is
characterized by dots, spots, dabs, and dapples of all kinds. It
reminds us of a painting by the famous French pointillist
Georges Seurat, "A Sunday Afternoon in the Park." (It's the
painting featured in the museum scene of Ferris Beuhler's Day
Off). There is no uniformity