Spring

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

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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Carrion Comfort

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,

Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Spring and Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

              to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.