Gerard Manley Hopkins praises Spring

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
When weeds in wheels, shoots long and lovely and lush
Thrush's eggs look like little heavens, and thrush
Though the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
the ear, it strikes like lightening 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 lambs have too their fling.

What is all this juice, this joy?

Hopkins' rich use of language, and in this case the end rhymes, always amaze me.

The photo above is "my" forsythia, the one outside my bedroom window whose buds I watched waiting for a couple of weeks. These are not particularly graceful or pretty flowers up close. But from across the lawn -- and they have burst into color in many lawns these last few days -- they are a gobs of gold brightening days, like this one, when the sky is very low and an unbroken covering of gray.