Meaning of Spring By Gerard Manley Hopkins poem?

Answer 1

'Nothing is so beautiful as spring' is the first line of the poem.
This line clearly summarises the meaning of the first eight lines or octave of the poem 'Spring'. A lot of this part of the poem, the octave, is easier to understand than the sestet. In the octave, Hopkins mentions many of the details of spring that impress him. He gives a series of images one after the other that are typical of the season of spring.
In the second line he pictures fresh weeds growing through a wheel in a yard.
In the third line he praises the speckled colours on a thrushes' egg.
In the fourth and fifth lines he shows his delight at the wonderful sound of the thrushes song in the woods and compares its effect to lightning.
In the sixth line he portrays the shiny leaves and blossoms of the pear-tree.
In the seventh line he describes the fast moving and richly coloured blue sky.
In the eighth line he shows his delight at the playful lambs.

In the sestet, the last six lines, Hopkins looks for the real meaning that lies behind the happiness and energy of nature in springtime. Therefore the sestet develops the thought of the poem. It looks for the meaning behind the beauty. Hopkins finds that nature's beauty reflects God's perfect beauty. He then expresses a wish to shelter the beauty and innocence of childhood from sin.

In line nine Hopkins asks the following basic question:
'What is all this juice and all this joy?'
In line ten, Hopkins quickly answers that it all goes back to the Garden of Eden from The Bible. As a priest he believes in the stories of the bible. Spring is like an echo or a reminder of Paradise.
In line eleven he begins a prayer. He prays God will preserve beauty before it loses its wholesomeness or purity.
In line twelve he appeals to Christ and asks him to protect beauty from sin.
In line thirteen he identifies the aspect of beauty he most wishes to see preserved. He is referring to childhood innocence. He obviously sees this as the springtime or 'Mayday' of human life.
In line fourteen he appeals to Jesus as the child of Mary to win innocent children to his side and save them from sin.
This is unusual because normally people who pray to Jesus want to be cleansed of sin after it happens. Jesus is normally the saviour of sinners. Hopkins wants Jesus to save the innocent.
Overall it seems Hopkins changes the subject of the octave, nature, and introduces a new subject, religion, in the sestet.