Vox Populi
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Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature. Only after his death did a few of Hopkins’s poems appear in anthologies where they were recognized for their innovative use of imagery and rhythm. By 1930 Hopkins’s work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century.
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“The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness” this is what I’ll recite all day!
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Oh, yes.
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Marvelous!
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Yes, it is!
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So fabulously peculiar—there is no linguistic
construct equal to his of any other voice or time. I’ve memorized a handful of them, maybe “Spring” is next.
Why do men then now not reck his rod! Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
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Thanks, Sean. I love the music of Hopkins’s poems.
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