It was a beautiful spring weekend here: some trees are leafing out, some others are blooming, the foothills are getting green, and the robins have started singing in the mornings and evening (they do “so rinse and wring the ear”). I thought of the first line of this poem yesterday evening so here it is for your Monday.
(I’m only leaving the second stanza in for the line “all this juice and all this joy”–I can live without original sin in my sonnets, but Hopkins was a priest so there you go.)
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.