William Blake and Gerrard Manley Hopkins are two poets with different styles of

poetry; Blake was romantic poet while Hopkins was a Victorian. However, it is

well known that both poets used elements of nature to express religious varying

feelings, be it to criticize some of the most Orthodox aspects in society or to

comment on Gods relationship with humanity. This paper will attempt to show the

precedence of nature in the two famous poems; spring and fall by Hopkins and

Blakes poem The sick Rose. To achieve this, I will analyze the poems

separately, before comparing them.

Spring and Fall by Gerrard Manley Hopkins

In spring and fall, Hopkins is addressing Margaret, a young girl who is grieving

because the trees in the Goldengrove forest have lost all their leaves and are dying

off (What, don't you cry every year when the leaves fall off the trees?).Hopkins

then tells Margaret that she will grow wiser as she grow older and realize that

grieving for the forest is mourning her own mortality because humans will also

wither and die like the trees.

In this poem Hopkins uses a sprung rhythm, although it is lyrical where each line

has four beats and the lines form couplets. Hopkins uses a regular rhyme scheme in

the first six lines, but in lines 7-9 he shifts to three lines rhyming in a row. Here the
speaker shifts so that emphasis is placed on the message that Margaret will

understand the reason for the dying leaves; mortality

An important element in spring and Fall is the symbolism and imagery used by

Hopkins. Firstly, right from the title there is a sense that the speaker intends to use

juxtaposition in the poem. In fact, assuming that the seasons are a representation of

human life, spring could be interpreted as childhood, summer as adolescence,

winter as middle age then Fall would obviously represent the old age or nearing

death. In essence, Margaret is experiencing spring but soon she will get wiser as

Fall dawns upon her. In the second line, Hopkins uses the word unleaving of the

tree leaves to imply that the poem is set in autumn. The word WanWood in line 8

is also symbolic; in fact Hopkins makes up WanWood from the two distict words

Wan and wood. And since Wan is another way of saying sickly or pale, then

WanWood must be a representation sickness and disease. An important note in the

same line is the use of alliteration in the repeated W sound of wanwood

and "worlds. Another example of alliteration is G in the word GoldenGrove

Sick rose By William Blake

In this poem William Blake is addressing a Sick rose. The speaker tells us

that the roses life has been destroyed by an the dark secret Love of an

invisible worm which has stolen into its bed in a howling storm
 The first element that Blake uses in this poem is the apostrophe

whereby in the first line he addresses the sick rose as "O rose. Symbolism is

evident right from the second line where Blake speaks of the "invisible worm.

Of course, worms are not literally invisible, Blake might be referring to a

form of camouflage that the worm has assumed. Typically, invisibility is a

metaphorical representation of the worms hidden acts of destruction. Blake

speaks of "howling storm," in line four, giving the poem a rather ominous

tone. Again, in Line 5 Bed," refers to the land in which the rose is growing

.Blake also personifies the worm in lines 7 and 8 when he remarks that it

destroys with love. Figuratively, the rose could be a metaphor for a prostitute and

the invisible worm representative of syphilis. Given Blakes historical context in 19 th

century London, a time when both prostitution and syphilis were running rampant in

the city, such an inference makes sense. Syphilis often went undetected, much like

the unseen worm that has infected the rose. Furthermore, roses have thorns while

they are visibly beautiful, they are by no means docile. Prostitutes, however

beautiful, were often crass and unrefined.

In the second stanza, the bed of crimson joy has dual meaning. Literally,

Blake is referring to the roses flower bed. However, metaphorically, he may be

referring to an actual bed something closely identified with prostitutes. Crimson is

a color often associated with lust, infidelity, and passion, so while it literally refers to

the roses color, on a metaphorical level, it could be referencing the lusty,

adulterous, and passionate nature of a prostitutes line of work. The words his dark

secret love incorporate yet again the Romantic fascination with mystery and the

unknown. Furthermore, the use of the particle his implies that the source of the
infection is male. This makes it all the more likely that the poem is a reference to

prostitution since a prostitute would contract syphilis from a male client. Men

turned to prostitution to satisfy their lusty desires, which could be perceived as

dark love, and a man would never openly advertise the fact that he sought the

company of a prostitute, thus the love is both dark and secret. Once infected with

the disease, a prostitute would likely perish from syphilis, making the last two lines

his dark secret love/ does thy life destroy all the more pertinent.

Comparison

In the poem we see that the autor asks a question to a child called

Margaret and he says: Margaret, are you grieving?

Over Goldengroveunleaving?. What the author wants to

reflect is that the little girl is saddened because winter has come

and the forest is dying, and as she is still a child she doesnt

understand that these things happen. She is so innocent that she is

worried about the leaves and about the things of man: (the

appurtenances of man become the exemplar for nature) because of

her fresh thoughts (innocent thoughts). She is in a very hard

moment because of the falling leaves (that represent the death), a

moment that all people have to understand because all of us have

to experience it. Then, her father tells to her daughter that as soon

as she gets older she will continue to experience such griefs but not

of this type. Here he is talking about mortality, he is giving her

daughter the lesson of life. What is reflected is that people are born

to die and that when she would have more knowledge, then she

would still experience more horrible things like death. But now she

is saddened for her innocence lost.

The poem is called "The Sick Rose" so it's no surprise that nature

figures prominently into it. But this poem isn't just about a dying

flower. It's about a weird, almost magical wormit can fly after all

that destroys the flower. Sure we all know about the circle of life

and how bugs eat plants etc., but there's something more sinister

about that story in this poem.

In "Spring and Fall", Hopkins demonstrates a separation between

humanity and nature and a separation between humanity and God.

His use of imagery and his sympathetic tone allows the readers to

make both distinctions and similarities between adult and child,

nature and man, and conscious and intuitive knowledge.