Spring

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Teacher card

Published: 1918, in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Length: 15 lines, 125 words, 1 word in 21 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: spring, sun
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrushThrough the echoing timber does so rinse and wringThe ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brushThe descending blue; that blue is all in a rushWith 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 beginningIn 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 thewinning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (died 1889), Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918), lines 948–963 of Project Gutenberg ebook #22403. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 15 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#ho-spring

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/hopkins-spring · popplepoetry.com