Spring / 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)
from Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography