Relevant background| Summary| Themes| Tones
Imagery | Sound Effects

Spring
Gerard Manley Hopkins [1844-1899]

Relevant Background

• Hopkins was a priest who wrote Nature Poetry.
• He celebrated beauty in the natural world. He loved the freshness of spring.
• In many of his poems, like ‘Spring’, he linked beauty in nature to prayer.
• He thought that beauty in nature was a reminder of God’s love and greatness.
• He thought that beauty in nature was a reminder of the innocence and purity of childhood.
• He wrote this poem more than a hundred years ago.
• Hopkins wrote in a beautiful style that was sometimes difficult. He liked to express his feelings and views in new ways. He left out words such as ‘like’ in line three and changed the normal word order like in line eight.
• He often used striking and dramatic comparisons like in line three.
• Hopkins put a lot of sound effects into his poetry.
• He wrote many of his poems in the sonnet form.
• He enjoyed the unique shape, colours, beauty and inner energy of nature

Summary

‘Spring’ is a sonnet. A sonnet is a rhyming fourteen-line poem. The poem is divided into two clearly different parts. The first part, of eight lines, is known as the octave. The second part, of six lines, is known as the sestet.

‘Nothing is so beautiful as spring’ is the first line of the poem.
This line clearly summarises the meaning of the first eight lines or octave of the poem ‘Spring’. A lot of this part of the poem, the octave, is easier to understand than the sestet. In the octave, Hopkins mentions many of the details of spring that impress him. He gives a series of images one after the other that are typical of the season of spring.
In the second line he pictures fresh weeds growing through a wheel in a yard.
In the third line he praises the speckled colours on a thrushes’ egg.
In the fourth and fifth lines he shows his delight at the wonderful sound of the thrushes song in the woods and compares its effect to lightning.
In the sixth line he portrays the shiny leaves and blossoms of the pear-tree.
In the seventh line he describes the fast moving and richly coloured blue sky.
In the eighth line he shows his delight at the playful lambs.

In the sestet, the last six lines, Hopkins looks for the real meaning that lies behind the happiness and energy of nature in springtime. Therefore the sestet develops the thought of the poem. It looks for the meaning behind the beauty. Hopkins finds that nature’s beauty reflects God’s perfect beauty. He then expresses a wish to shelter the beauty and innocence of childhood from sin.

In line nine Hopkins asks the following basic question:
‘What is all this juice and all this joy?’
In line ten, Hopkins quickly answers that it all goes back to the Garden of Eden from the bible. As a priest he believes in the stories of the bible. Spring is like an echo or a reminder of Paradise.
In line eleven he begins a prayer. He prays God will preserve beauty before it loses its wholesomeness or purity.
In line twelve he appeals to Christ and asks him to protect beauty from sin.
In line thirteen he identifies the aspect of beauty he most wishes to see preserved. He is referring to childhood innocence. He obviously sees this as the springtime or ‘Mayday’ of human life.
In line fourteen he appeals to Jesus as the child of Mary to win innocent children to his side and save them from sin.
This is unusual because normally people who pray to Jesus want to be cleansed of sin after it happens. Jesus is normally the saviour of sinners. Hopkins wants Jesus to save the innocent.
Overall it seems Hopkins changes the subject of the octave, nature, and introduces a new subject, religion, in the sestet.

Themes

Hopkins praises the beauty of nature in springtime:
‘Nothing is so beautiful as spring’. He calls it ‘all this juice and all this joy’.

Hopkins celebrates energy in the natural world:
‘weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush’. Note how the ‘w’ and ‘l’ sounds are musical and add to the feeling of energy.

Hopkins celebrates colour in the natural world:
‘that blue is all in a rush with richness’. Note how the repeated ‘r’ sound deepens the meaning.

Hopkins regards nature’s beauty as a memory of Paradise:
‘ A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning in Eden garden’

Hopkins feels despair at the way maturity spoils childhood innocence:
‘sour with sinning’. He worries for the future of innocent minds. He tells Jesus to preserve children’s perfect innocence.

Tones

In the octave and the tone is happy and full of celebration:
‘Nothing is so beautiful as spring’

In line nine the tone is questioning:
‘What is all this juice and all this joy?’

Sometimes, also as in line nine, the tone is full of energy:
‘What is all this juice and all this joy?’

In the sestet the tone changes and becomes urgent and anxious:
‘Have, get, before it cloy, before it cloud’

In the sestet there is also a tone of regret that contrasts with the joy of the octave:
‘Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning’

In the sestet the tone is pleading:
‘Have, get’

In the sestet the tone is prayerful:
‘Most, O maid's child, thy choice’

Imagery

Hopkins uses many comparisons:
He compares the ‘eggs of a thrush’ to the speckled and cloud patterned sky. This is a simile, with the word ‘like’ omitted. He compares the song of the thrush to lightning, another simile. He compares springtime to the Garden of Eden from the bible. This comparison is a metaphor. Notice how he compares the pear tree in the distance to a paintbrush colouring the sky, another metaphor.

Note how Hopkins uses contrast, especially between sinning and innocence. The whole poem contains a contrast between the joyful octave praising nature and the anxious sestet worried about sin and praying to God.

He uses images to capture beauty and energy:
‘What is all this juice and all this joy?’ and ‘weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush’ [these all have an appealing sound due to alliteration]. Find more yourself.

Hopkins uses various images of nature as examples of the beauty of spring:
‘weeds’, ‘eggs’, ‘thrush’, ‘lambs’ and ‘peartree’.

Hopkins uses images from the bible:
‘in the beginning in Eden garden’

The final image is an image of a prayer as Hopkins pleads to Jesus to preserve innocence:
‘Most, O maid's child, thy choice’.

Sound effects

Alliteration [the repetition of first letters].
Note the ‘j’ as follows:
‘juice and all this joy’; and ‘l’ sounds in ‘look little low heavens’ and ‘like lightnings’

Assonance [repetition of vowels]:
Note the ‘i’/‘ea’ sounds in ‘rinse and wring the ear, it’. Note also the long ‘ai’/’ea’ of ‘strain’ and ‘earth’ at the start of line ten:
‘A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning’.
Note also the long and musical ‘e’ sounds that are repeated in ‘sweet’, ‘being’ and ‘beginning’ in the second half of this line.

Rhyming:
There is a strong rhyming pattern. There are only three different ending sounds in the entire poem. This makes the poem very musical.
The ‘ing’ and ‘ush’ sounds are repeated at the end of various lines in the octave in the pattern: abbaabba
Likewise ‘oy’ and ‘ing’ form a pattern in the sestet: cbcbcb

Internal Rhyme [rhyming inside one line]:
‘thrush’ is repeated in line three. The ‘ing’ sound is repeated internally in many of the lines that end in the ‘ing’ sound. An example of this is ‘racing’ and ‘fling’ in line eight.
Can you count the number of times ‘ing’ is used in the poem? Did you get thirteen? Isn’t this a very musical effect?