Poems of Nature, Growth, and Renewal

Here's one by 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 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.

D'art

Very nice.

Thanks, jjorge. I've been a fan of Hopkins for many years. I don't connect directly to his specific religiosity, but I can relate to his spirituality, if that makes any sense...

D'art

Hopkins is wonderful.

I especially like 'Spring and Fall' and Pied Beauty'

Do you have a Hopkins favorite?

I do, jjorge. This is one they had us read in high school, and, of course, it wasn't until years later that I really appreciated it. But the rhythm got to me even back then. And the last line is stunning:

Spring and Fall

to a young child


Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

D'art

Hey no Fair! That's MY favorite! . . .you can't have it . . .

(then jjorge remembers parents'words: 'You've got to Share!)


Oh ok . . .we can share it . . .





Here's one by C. Rossetti:

"Spring"

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.
(Christina Rossetti)

Thanks, jjorge, I like that Rossetti poem. She can be rather dark--not that there's anything wrong with that.

And sure, we can share Margaret. She's a sweetheart...

Here's a poem by Swinburne that I like. To fully appreciate its musicality you have to hear or speak it aloud.

I particularly like lines 25-40





Chorus from 'Atalanta'

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous 5
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces.
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light, 10
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, 15
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! 20
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over, 25
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 30
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes 35
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. 40

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide 45
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; 50
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 55
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
(Algernon Charles Swinburne)

I think it's interesting , on reading this poem, to reflect on the fact that William Carlos Williams was a doctor.




Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
(William Carlos Williams )

Thanks for posting those, jjorge! And yes, interesting to know that Williams was a physician. Lends the poem a bit more resonance...

Willows
i.m. Anne Kennedy (1935 - 1998)

"No, plant me,
like my Grandmother's blazing dahlias
in the subsuming earth,
where I can be lifted,
where there's a chance of resurrection".

One day in March you lined up
willow cuttings on your table, stems wrapped
in foil, a gift for each of your friends.

"These will take" you said,
"they will take, I promise,
like no other tree you've ever known."

I placed mine in water
near the light
and waited for the roots to appear.

Even when they did and white fronds
filled the jar, I feared transplanting
my willow into the dark.

In September you left. The first frosts now
lie on the grass and on the willows
whose disconsolate leaves blow around us.


by JOAN McBREEN

That's a good one, jjorge, and very apt for the topic of nature, growth and renewal...