Before having read “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I assumed the poem would be based around a pleasing description of the season of spring. In his poem, Hopkins glorifies every aspect of spring as a fragment of Eden from the weeds to the “glassy pear-tree leaves” (Hopkins, 6). Spring could be a poem focused around the religious argument about the beauty of God being reflected in that of his creation: nature. It may also be interpreted as a poem about the purity of creation before it was soured with sin.
Through his poem “Spring,” Gerard Manley Hopkins teaches one to appreciate the minute miracles present in the natural world. He portrays even a common weed as a beautiful characteristic of the springtime by categorizing them in the same subset that, the more favorable, “pear tree leaves and blooms” belong to(Hopkins, 6). Hopkins portrays nature as an object of purity and mankind as beings capable of both purity and of corruption through “sour[ing] with sin”(Hopkins, 12). This provides as a warning for people to turn away from corruption and observe a lifestyle of innocence like nature.
All rights reserved © 2019 Josephine Joyil