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.   

Public Domain

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.