Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring” offer contrasting depictions of spring. Hopkins’s “Spring” is a celebration of nature and the spirituality that comes with seasonal rebirth, while Millay’s “Spring” is spiteful and defiant towards poetic conventions about spring. These two poems initially seem to oppose one another, but Hopkins’s turn in tone and Millay’s repeating form expose deeper similarities between their concepts. Hopkins’s portrayal of the season in “Spring” emphasizes the innocence of nature, which he values as an aspect of beauty.
Hopkins begins with an absolute statement: “Nothing is so beautiful as spring -/When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush” (II. 1-2). Instead of questioning spring’s purpose or arguing against another interpretation of its beauty, Hopkins introduces his appreciation as fact. His language illustrates motion and fullness, with the “weeds, in wheels” shooting “long and lovely and lush. ” This word choice reveals Hopkins’s view of spring as vibrant and bountiful, which he echoes in all the poem’s imagery. As with all of his poetry, Hopkins bases this poem in his Christian faith.
Hopkins introduces religion as a comparison for spring’s beauty: “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” (II. 3-5). Hopkins captures the clarity of springtime, writing that “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” (II. 6-8). In addition to the religious symbolism of the color blue, Hopkins presents the spiritual unity of nature by describing the leaves of the pear tree as brushing with the sky in a oneness hat transcends their distance, as well as including the Christ symbol of lambs in the landscape. Hopkins’s awe culminates in one question, and he asks, “What is all this juice and all this joy? ” (l. 9).
While Hopkins tries to reaffirm the presence of positivity in spring in this line, he instead turns the poem from an appreciation of spring to an expression of anxiety. Hopkins initially references religion as a positive comparison, but the following lines confirm the turn of this theme: “A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning / In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy” (II. 0-11). In referencing the Garden of Eden from Genesis, Hopkins suggests spring is all that remains of original perfection otherwise lost to the world. However, Hopkins also fears the decay of this perfection from sin. These two lines connect the preceding and following stanzas; line 10 repeats the religious and natural motifs of the first stanza, while line 11 marks the initial fear and anxiety of the last stanza.
He continues, “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” (II. 2-14). Hopkins praises the spiritual worth of innocence, but remains anxious. Innocence is susceptible to sin, and Hopkins’s obsession with spiritual purity ultimately overrides the ability to find peace in the beauty of spring. Hopkins concludes with the urgency to save innocence before the seasons change and spoil what is momentarily free from sin. While Hopkins seeks to preserve the spiritual purity of spring, Millay does not recognize any spirituality in the season. Instead, Millay is bitter and renounces conventional perceptions of spring as a time of rebirth and joy.
In Millay’s “Spring,” she determines that the purpose of spring is to give false hope and silence the reality of suffering. Millay’s poetic progression follows a pattern, used twice in this poem. Each half of the poem is divided into four components: an unanswered question, a negation, a statement of certainty, and a negative nature image. Introducing this pattern, Millay addresses spring as the month of April, both asking its purpose and denying its significance: “To what purpose, April, do you return again? / Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness / Of little leaves opening stickily” (II. 1-4).
These lines fulfill the first half of the poem’s pattern by beginning with an unanswered question and then expressing a denial. In this half, Millay denies spring’s ability to suppress death with the distraction of physical rebirth. Millay is confident in her denial, confirming, “I know what I know. / The sun is hot on my neck as I observe / The spikes of the crocus” (II. 5-8). These lines continue the pattern as Millay asserts a personal truth and follows her statement with nature imagery.
The language is uncharacteristically aggressive for springtime, with the “spikes of the crocus” conveying a violence not typically associated with blooming flowers. While Millay acknowledges some inherent goodness in spring, she does not believe in redemption of its false hope: “The smell of the earth is good. / It is apparent that there is no death” (II. 8-9). Millay’s phrasing indicates her skepticism; by adding “it is apparent” to line 9 instead of only insisting “there is no death,” Millay inserts doubt into the image of perfection and forces the line to take on a negative meaning.
If Millay did not point out the importance of appearance in these lines, the meaning would be hopeful. Millay restarts the poem’s pattern, asking, “But what does that signify? ” of the earth’s apparent liveliness (l. 10). As with the first question, this remains unanswered, and encourages the reader to join in her skepticism. Continuing to expose the pain hidden by spring’s beauty, Millay compares human suffering to decomposition in that “Not only under ground are the brains of men / Eaten by maggots” (II. 11-12).
When read considering line 2, these lines suggests that suffering cannot be eased by beauty as mind decays. In light of this suffering, Millay restates the meaninglessness of life and insists that “Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs” (II. 13-15). The metaphors in line 15 invoke feelings of futility and discomfort in the reader. The cup is designed solely to contain liquid, and its emptiness reflects the uselessness of life and the failure to fulfill purpose. In being uncarpeted, the stairs still fulfill their purpose, but do so without comfort.
This lack of comfort reflects Millay’s dissatisfaction with positive perceptions of spring, as these fail to account for uncomfortable realities of the human experience. Finally, Millay rhetorically asks, “Is it not enough that yearly, down this hill, / April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” (Il. 16-18). Instead of seeking an answer to why the cycles of seasons continues and why spring exists, Millay closes with an image of foolishness and ignorance representing the close-mindedness of only praising spring’s beauty.
While Millay’s poem criticizes the praise of spring’s cyclical rebirth, it in fact follows a cyclical progression by returning to the same pattern. In structuring the poem as such, Millay reaffirms the presence of the very concept she criticizes. To the same effect, Hopkins’s poem aims to celebrate the beauty of spring, but ultimately succumbs to the negativity it intends to overcome. While Hopkins’s and Millay’s poems may initially seem contradictory, the progression of their themes and structure actually prove their intersecting ideas.