Welcome back to The Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern. Today is Thursday, May 7th, 2020.

Today's poem is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest,

and one of the foremost of the Victorian poets.

He lived from 1844 to 1889 and is especially known for his use of spring rhythm.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called spring.

Hopefully it's appropriate to almost all of us now.

This is how it goes.

Nothing is so beautiful as spring.

When weeds and wheels shoot long and lovely and lush,

thrush eggs look little low heavens and thrush through the echoing timber,

does so rinse and ring the ear,

it strikes like lightning to hear him sing the glassy pear tree 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 May Day and girl and boy, most, most o maid's child thy choice and worthy the winning

so it seems appropriate as opposed to read a poem by someone who is known for spring rhythm

read a poem called Spring.

This is one of his Petrarchan sonnets.

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