On Loss.
Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hopkins
1. Hopkins’s short lyric shares some elements with the sonnet, but it
is a nonce form, invented for this poem only. Hopkins’ idiosyncratic
meter, which he dubbed “sprung rhythm,” uses accent marks over certain
syllables. What is the dominant meter and line length? What is the
rhyme scheme? Describe the poem’s structure.
Okay, i feel like i need to analyze what this question even means before i can answer it. That’s probably not a good sign. Okay. The poem has about 4 accents per line and each line has about 8 syllables, making a the meter iambic tetrameter. The poem consists of mainly of rhyming couplets, however lines 7,8, and9 break this pattern as all three end in rhyme. The first eight lines ask a question and set the story, line 9 is the turning point with “And Yet”, which is followed by the resolution (lines 10-15)
2. What is the effect of the frequent use of alliteration in the poem?
Combined with assonance and consonance, what mood does this device
create?
The mood created by these devices is one of sorrow. They slow the tempo down and give the poem a dreary feel. In line 8, “worlds of wanwood” and “leafmeal lie” provide three repetitions of consonant and two of assonance. Other examples occur in lines 1-2, “grieve/gold”; line 11, “sorrow’s/springs”; line 13, “heart heard,” “ghost guessed”; line 9, “will/weep/why” and so on.
3. Comment on the effect created by such unusual diction as
Goldengrove and unleaving (line 2), fresh (line 4), wanwood and
leafmeal (line 8), springs (line 11), and blight (line 14.) How do the
connotations of these words create the poem’s mood?
“Goldengrove” refers to a grove full of golden autumn leaves. I discovered that “unleaving” is an original word that Hopkin’s has coined to describe the process the trees undergo during the fall. “fresh” is associated with the young thoughts of the child that Hopkin’s addresses the this line to. “wanwood” suggests a pale color, like death, and “leafmeal” relates to rotting leaves, also associated with death. “Springs” on line 11 has a double meaning; springs as in nature, and the source of the child’s tears. “Blight” is associated with disease and death. The connotations of these words create a sorrowful and mourning tone.
4. Analyze the poet’s use of figurative language. How does it suggest
the theme of the poem?
The theme of the poem is that the awareness and tragedy of death to a child will become rationalized when the child matures. The “heart” in line 5 symbolizes human emotion, while the “mind” and “ghost” in line 5 represent experience. This figurative language expresses the theme that, somehow we tend to brush death aside in our adulthood; that after a child matures, he loses his awareness of this tragedy.
1. Frost’s poem, like Hopkins’s, borrows from the sonnet form. What is
its meter, rhyme scheme, and structure?
The meter is iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of aabcbdcdeefgfg. The first ten lines determine the subject of the poem. “He says” is repeated at the beginning of lines 4,6, and 10, which tell’s us about the birds song. In the last four lines, the resolution is written.
2. Paraphrase the three messages of the oven bird, then analyze the
meaning of the word fall as it encapsulates the theme of the poem.
The birds song says that the leaves are old. The birds song says that the fall of petals from the blossoms of fruit trees on sunny days of late spring, and that fall is coming. The birds song says that the dust of roads built by man covers everything, especially beautiful things.
3. Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem. How does the oven bird
symbolize the human condition?
In the last four lines of the poem, the speaker tells us that the oven bird would cease to sing if he did not have anything to share with us; it is the meaning of his song that drives him forward. It symbolizes the human condition in the phrase, “what to make of a diminished thing.” stating that humans often make a big deal out of something diminished; it would not seem diminished if not for human emotion.
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