The poems God's Will for You and Me and Pied Beauty both deal with an individual's feelings towards God. The writers use feelings of praise towards god, however they express their emotions in very different ways. I believe that the writer of God's Will for You and Me did a better job than the writer of Pied Beauty. According to Perrine, Pied Beauty is a bad poem.
The poem Pied Beauty seems to be very didactic. The writer is trying to preach to you to praise God because of things such as the beauty of nature. The writer is putting forth the idea that all things are subject to change and that no matter how they change there is beauty to be found. However the poem seems to have words strung together that interfere with both the pattern and picture painted in the mind of the reader. It also seems to be choppy or unorganized.
However, the writer of God's Will for You and Me uses words that express the true meaning of the poem. Not only does this poem flow well in the way that any rearrangement would be harmful to the poem but the writer is also very clear in the idea he is trying to get across. I believe that this is a truly good poem. Even though the writer is again trying to express his feelings towards God, he doesn't seem to preach. He appears to be expressing his own feelings rather than telling the reader how they should feel.
For the most part I can see Perrine's point of view on what makes a poem either a good or a bad poem. However, I do not agree with his views on sentimentality. I believe that one of the key criteria for a good poem is that it grabs you either on an emotional or on an intellectual level. In other words it makes you feel or it makes you think. To say that sentimentality cannot have a place in a good poem would seem to be an unnecessarily close-minded point of view.