Tuesday, March 20, 2007
    3599

    Happy Spring

    It doesn't feel like it and I have on wool slacks today, but it is Spring. I've been using A Poem a Day edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery (Steerforth Press, 1999) and today's selection "Spring" is by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) and was written in 1877. Many poems of the 19th c. are quite predictable, but this one has some irregularities that I found quite charming, as the poet juxtaposes the freshness of spring with Eden before the fall. And don't we often have that same sense when walking out doors on a glorious day. In the notes it says that when Hopkins showed it to another, known poet he got a discouraging analysis because he used "several entirely novel and simultaneous experiments in versification and construction. . . and unprecedented system of aliteration and compound words. . ." I can't make my lowly blogger word processing component space appropriately, but I think I have the puncuation and lines recorded correctly.

    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 worth the winning.Source URL: http://maryelizabeth-winstead.blogspot.com/2007/03/3599-happy-spring-it-doesnt-feel-like.html
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