All in a rush with richness

    The latest subject in our writers' portraits series is Gerard Manley Hopkins, aged 15, painted by his aunt Anne (National Portrait Gallery), and here, as it is May Day, is his poem 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.     

    

    The line, "the blue is all in a rush with richness" reminds me of another Hopkins poem The May Magnificat - which would also be appropriate today - and its couplet "And azuring-over greybell makes / Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes", and elsewhere he wrote of "the blue-buzzed haze" and its effect on him. If, as Katherine Swift suggests, "blue is the colour of possibility", for Hopkins it had a deep spiritual significance.

    Here's another passage which links May and blue, this time from The Wreck of the Deutschland:

    "For how to the heart's cheering

     The down-dugged, ground-hugged grey

     Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing

     Of pied and peeled May!"

Comments

[Erika]

It's becoming one of those strange days where one thing leads on from the other. At breakfast my husband said, out of the blue, "Gerard Manley Hopkins' father sounded like an interesting person" and here you are thinking of him also...Then I came in from weeding, clutching a handful of lemon balm runners and thinking "Margaret would like these and we must also ask her if she would like two of our spare potted-up Rugosas" About 30 minutes later friend Margaret calls to ask "Where do you buy your Rugosa roses from? We lost two shrubs this Winter and are going to take your suggestion of turning over to fool-proof Rugosas"

Now I'm waiting for a third coincidence.

[Cornflower]

How funny!
I was doing the ironing when GMH came into my head and seemed an appropriate subject for a post today.
I hope you get your hat-trick of coincidences, Erika.

[Mary]

I'm thinking of weeds long and lovely and lush in my garden!

[Sue]

I used that poem a couple of May Days ago. It's funny how Victorian he looks in that portrait and how utterly un-Victorian his poetry is.

[Cornflower]

Like mine, then ...

[Cornflower]

You are right, Sue.
Re. his clothes, I wonder whether the blue of his tie was even then a special colour for him.

[Nan]

Everything beautiful is in this post. Thank you.

[Cornflower]

You're welcome, Nan.

[Barbara]

Two lovely posts. I love GMH.

[the velvet nap]

Swoon. And then more swoon.

[Cornflower]

I see there's a documentary about him on Youtube, first part here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL4lsEcE-js (I've watched only a bit so far).

[Cornflower]

Indeed!