The Writer's Life: How do you package, in very beautiful writing, a hard moral point that’s important to you? Read this –

“Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins; he wrote it in May, 1877, and it’s very famous. The rhyming structure takes you along the familiar path of ABBA ABBA, i.e., first and fourth lines rhyme, as do second and third in the first, eight-line segment;and CD CD CD in the last six lines, i.e., every alternate line rhyming. But all that’s as nothing compared to the beauty of the language – savor this poem, even if you know it well; read it aloud to yourself. As to his moral hope/ despair at the end – bear in mind that he was a Jesuit priest of the Catholic Church and he felt his beliefs as others feel pain.

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.