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spring
'Spring'

'How does Hopkins use language and style to convey his message to his readers?'

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a 19th-century poet whose poetry work mainly consisted of religion, nature and inner anguish as the main themes. Hopkins celebrated beauty in the nature world and he loved the season of spring, especially the freshness it brought. In most of his poems, like 'Spring', Hopkins linked in nature to prayer and religion; he thought that the pure beauty in nature alone, was enough to remind us of God's love and the innocence/purity of childhood. 'Spring' was written a little over a century ago.

The poem is set in the countryside during the spring season and it is in a natural setting. We get the feeling that there are farms and grassland around us as we walk through 'weeds in wheels' and we also understand it may be because of the fact that there are lambs frolicking on the hillside. Perhaps there may even be forestry around as the phrase 'echoing timber' suggests trees and branches. The weather is typical sunny, spring weather as the poem suggests the sky to be of a pale blue colour, which 'descends' down perhaps connecting heaven and earth, highlighting the theme of religion. In the last six lines, all of the description of nature disappears and moves into the image of Adam and Eve. Perhaps Hopkins is trying to create the image of the Garden Of Eden.

'Spring’ is a sonnet and is divided into two parts: the first part is eight lines which is called an octave. The second part is six lines which is called a sestet. It has fourteen lines and uses the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA CDCDCD. Hopkins uses a technique of stanza breaks to emphasize the mental change of direction which occurs in this poem. In the first few lines of the poem, we get the beautiful description of spring and then in the second stanza he switches to a more serious tone to ask a question, 'What is all this juice and joy?' and then finally prepares us for the addressing of

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