Spring: What Is All This Juice & Joy?

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 lightning 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.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

This poem — perfect for Easter — is a Petrarchan sonnet penned by Gerard Manley Hopkins, an Englishman and a Catholic priest, who wrote many remarkable Petrarchan sonnets, though this particular Petrarchan isn’t among his most famous. I think it deserves to be.

One of the first things to note about Hopkins’s literature is that his religious devotion entirely infuses it. It infuses it through-and-through. If, therefore, one is put-off by religious subject-matter, even in metaphor, Gerard Hopkins, the genius priest-poet, isn’t for you.

Hopkins was a trained musician and also a poet — a poet of such wild originality that I’ve often speculated his prosodic imagination must surely have come from some madman-like admixture of the private music inside his brain, combined with grammar greatly influenced by his grasp of Latin.

As I’ve mentioned before, Hopkins is one of the few poets whom I will perfervidly call a true original — he’s at the very top of my list, in fact, the most original of them all.

Because of his originality, Hopkins’s syntax as well as his language and diction, his meter and metric, his entire writing-style (and his subject-matter too) are often cryptic and odd, difficult to decode. It’s no exaggeration to say that Hopkins wrote in the syntax of Latin — because he thought in the grammar of Latin. Many readers don’t think Hopkins is worth the effort he requires, and though I disagree, I understand where the sentiment comes from, and I don’t begrudge anyone this assessment.

Once decoded Hopkins’s poems yield up incredible things, and many of these poems never stop yielding, no matter how many times you reread them. In this regard, there’s only one poet who’s possibly — possibly, I repeat — superior, and that poet is William Shakespeare. This is my opinion.

As I’ve also discussed, the Petrarchan sonnet — or Italian sonnet, if you prefer (the two terms are synonymous) — is a sonnet which, like the Shakespearean sonnet — or English sonnet, if you prefer (those two terms are also synonymous) — consists of fourteen total lines all of which have a rhyming mate.

Unlike the Shakespearean sonnet, the Petrarchan’s first eight lines (the octet) follow a strict ABBAABBA rhyme-pattern, and then in the second section (the sestet), the final six lines are usually patterned CDCDCD. I say “usually” because in Petrarchan sonnets sestets can vary in their rhyme scheme. The pattern Hopkins chose for almost all of his Petrarchans (including this one) is the most traditional.

The English-Shakespearean sonnet was first used by one Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 — 1547) but made most popular by William Shakespeare (1564–1616) for his excellence with the form. It consists of three quatrains rhyming ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, and concludes with a couplet: GG.

The Italian-Petrarchan sonnet was first used by Dante (1265–1321) but made most popular by Petrarch (1304–1374) for his excellence with the form. The Petrarchan sonnet predates the Shakespearean sonnet by nearly two centuries and was the form that birthed the Shakespearean sonnet. By both tradition and also definition, Petrarchan sonnets contain a dramatic shift, known in Italian as volta (i.e. turn), between the octet and sestet. This dramatic shift, or volta, is often but not always demarcated by a double-space after the octet.

The English-Shakespearean sonnet, by contrast, doesn’t traditionally contain a volta after the first eight lines. Yet Shakespeare (among many others) clearly delighted in incorporating this stage-like element into any number of his 154 total sonnets — including many of his very best.

Line-spacing —or what grammarians, lexicographers, typesetters, and other specialists call lineation — isn’t a definitional part of any sonnet, whether Petrarchan or Shakespearean. Sonnet writers are at any place in the poem free to choose iambic pentameter or not, single-spaces or double-spaces, as they are also free to choose ornament breaks or not.

If — and only if — the poem contains fourteen total lines with one of the two rhyme schemes described above, no matter how odd or unrecognizable the poem may appear upon the page, it’s by definition either a Italian-Petrarchan sonnet or a English-Shakespearean sonnet, the determination of which rests solely upon the sonnet’s rhyme scheme.

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring” is in every way, including the volta and the double-space after the octet, a quintessential and quintessential-looking Petrarchan.

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney described Hopkins’s poem “Spring” as a “two-parter” — by which Seamus Heaney meant that the first eight-lines are a one-part unit celebrating the magic of springtime, and the final six lines, taking a dramatic turn, are a second-part unit which relate the spring season to God. Seamus Heaney is correct in his analysis, and whether he knows it or not, he’s articulating one of the primary things, discussed directly above, which distinguishes the Shakespearean sonnet from the Petrarchan sonnet: the volta or dramatic turn that occurs between the octet and sestet.

Among the first things to take special note of in this particular Hopkins poem is the ordinary and even prosaic opening line — completely uncharacteristic of Hopkins’s poetry in general:

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring — ”

It’s difficult to imagine a more undistinguished opening to any poem.

This fact is made all the more emphatic by every single line that follows Hopkins’s undistinguished opening: depictions of spring that boggle the brain with their blinding originality and uncanny accuracy — the eye-popping images and heart-stopping words which Hopkins uses to capture spring’s beauty.

I’ve over the years thought a great deal about Hopkins’s ostensibly trivial opening here.

For a long time (up until about two years ago) I tried to dismiss it as nothing more or less than exactly what it appears: an uninspired opening to an otherwise inspired poem.

In and of itself this isn’t particularly noteworthy since, as all writers of poetry know, opening lines are often the most difficult to compose.

I now no longer think this about Hopkins’s opening line in “Spring.”

He was far too meticulous— too original and linguistically erudite — to settle for such an opening. This fact alone has always struck me as somehow off, and because of which indicative of something more at work.

Hopkins was a compulsive rewriter, laboring over every word, sometimes for months or even years, and for this reason alone there’s no real doubt in my mind that he would have spotted in his rewrites his conspicuously ordinary opening. For this reason, my attempt at dismissal never quite satisfied me. For this reason, I was never quite able to put the matter to rest.

What I now think — and this struck me late one night like the dawning of a revelation — is that Hopkins deliberately opened with such a prosaic first line, only so that he could then lay to waste that same first line with lines that burst open in pure celebration of all the earthly magic that each springtime brings.

Spring is in a certain sense ordinary —by which I mean, easy to overlook and take for granted, especially when we’re preoccupied with work or school or family — so that we’re often liable to bleed springtime of its unimaginable strangeness, insofar as spring, like every other season, comes with a metronomic regularity that can make it seem commonplace. Yet the moment we pause and regard spring with the full attention of our human focus, we all, non-poet and poet alike, see immediately before us the fireworks display of earthly splendor that each springtime brings.

My conviction now is that Hopkins opened his poem in the way he did for precisely this purpose: to create juxtaposition and paradox, to jolt our attention and fix our focus on the overwhelming loveliness of each and every springtime.

Why do I think so?

Primarily because post first-line Hopkins’s poem, like spring herself, positively explodes with poetic power.

“When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”

The use of the word “wheels” here refers to the circular shape or pattern in which weed-patches often grow, and the originality of this alliterative four-word description, in collaboration with the next word “shoot,” is to me a miniature marvel.

“Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens”

This is a simile without the word “like” — thrush’s eggs look like little low heavens because they’re blue, those little eggs, just like the sky above. Perhaps also there’s a kind of look-and-delight-in-these-with-me connotation: Thrush’s eggs! Look! Little low heavens! Come look at these little low heavens with me.

“… and thrush/ through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring/
the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.”

Please take a moment and consider the idea and syntactical concision contained in those two lines.

Consider the images and rhymes.

You’re planted directly inside the new green timber, with shafts of sunlight streaming like lasers all around you, and you hear with absolute clarity the thrush’s sharp whistle, which rinses through your ear and wrings it clean and echoes through the sun-slashed woods — you hear it and see it and feel it, as I do too.

A few shrewd commentators have suggested that Hopkins may’ve chosen the word “timber” (instead of, for example, “forest” or “woods” or “trees”) because Hopkins was a musician whose musical brain likened “timber” to “timbre,” all in relation to the thrush’s song. I think this interpretation not merely plausible but ingenious—ingenious and accurate. Yet even more ingenious is that Hopkins conceived and captured it in language of such subtlety, such succinctness, such evocative force and originality.

Note also the lyric alliteration and internal rhymes throughout this entire poem — “the rolling around of word sounds,” as Seamus Heaney described it, “when all spring is throbbing”: weeds/wheels, long/lovely/lush, rinse/wring, leaves/blooms/brush, rush-with-richness, fair-their-fling.

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.

The “racing lambs” refers to the fleecy clouds passing across the wide-open sky above, as well as to the actual newborn lambs of spring.

The glassy-looking leaves and the blooming flowers of the pear tree (Hopkins makes “peartree” into one word purely for poetic effect, and often in his poetry he takes linguistic liberties like this) “they brush the descending blue … that blue all in a rush with richness….”

Have you ever looked up at the blue, blue sky, perhaps as a child, and felt for a moment as though it were suddenly descending down upon you?

That, I believe, is what Hopkins seeks and captures here: the plunging rush and richness of the blue-blue sky when you tip back your head and look up into the heavens, and for an instant it all feels as though it’s collapsing down upon you, the brittle pear-tree leaves and blooms enameled like glass across the cobalt.

Yet clearly there’s a deeper reason that Hopkins focuses here on the color blue — a reason first suggested in the third line of the poem: the little blue heavens of the thrush’s eggs.

Blue is traditionally associated with Mary, the mother of Christ, whom Hopkins refers to in the final line of the poem when he describes Christ as “maid’s [May’s] child.”

The name “Mary” and the word “May” (“May” as in the fifth month of the Gregorian calendar) both mean “maid” or “maiden.”

The word “May” first entered English in the middle of the eleventh century. It derives from the Latin word Maius, which is shorthand for the Latin mēnsis — or, in English, “menses,” as in the monthly female cycle.

The Latin name Maius, in turn, derives from the Greek name Maia.

Maia is the Greek goddess who’s also the mother of Hermes.

Hermes was “the messenger of the Gods.”

In Greek mythology, Maia was among the “seven sister nymphs” — also known as the “companions of Artemis” or, more commonly, “the Pleiades” — which is undoubtedly why in Ancient Roman mythology there’s also a goddess named Maia.

In Ancient Rome, Maia’s full name was Maia Majesta — the goddess of growth, fertility, spring, the season of all things rising, sizing, sympathizing, magnifying.

I am, please note, irreligious. My love for this poem has nothing to do with religious devotion — or, at least, not in any traditionally conceived usage of that term.

I say to you in this context that for this very reason I completely comprehend and appreciate the vital importance and human necessity for metaphor and symbol — for any and all reasoning-conceptual brains — which is to say, human brains. I understand it as a writer and I understand it even more as a living, breathing human-being.

In an Easter article I wrote some time ago, I quoted the following passage from a different spring poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins — a poem titled “May Magnificat”, which isn’t a sonnet and which was written just a few weeks after Hopkins wrote his sonnet called “Spring.”

“May Magnificat” opens with the following line:

“May is Mary’s month.”

In “May Magnificat,” you can substitute the name “Mother Nature” — first name Mother, last name Nature (from a long line of Natures) — for each instance of the name “Mary,” and the poem will give you the exact same meaning. That’s worth thinking about. “May Magnificat” is also about growth and life and mother-nature, and it, too, positively thunders with poetic strangeness and pow-uh.

For instance:

What is spring?
Growth in everything.

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle-blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod and sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.

Birth. Blood. Death. Winter. Resurrection. Rebirth. Spring. The lengthening of days. Light. Life.

“There is nothing greater than life,” wrote Voltaire.

That is what Easter is about.

That is what spring is about.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, the genius priest-poet, understood this — as did other early Christians, no matter their denomination or sect, who for this very reason preserved these ancient Pagan symbols of spring. They absorbed them, as it were, these precious independent-thinking few, and syncretically made them their own. They preserved and absorbed them, as Hopkins also does, for one reason above any other: because these symbols are so primal and immutable and true.

One need not be religious to love this and see the affirmation of life in it, as I do.