Spring and Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (July 28, 1844–June 8, 1889), was a famous English poet. Hopkins was a prolific writer in university, but later he converted religions, decided to become a priest, and burned all of his papers. Some years after that, he resumed writing poetry in private. Nothing was published until 1918, some thirty years after his death. Hopkins is famous for using sprung verse, a kind of meter where each line has a certain number of stressed syllables, and there may be any number of unstressed syllables. This is in contrast to traditional types of meter, where all syllables are counted.

Read the below poem aloud for best effect. There are four stressed syllables in each line.