Comparing Hopkins Spring And Millay's Spring

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” (ll. 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
/ The sun is hot on my neck as I observe / The spikes of the crocus” (ll. 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” (ll. 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