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Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’

Hopkin’s poem helps us keep beauty from perishing.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’
"Flower Still Life," 1614, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. Oil on copper; 12 inches by 15 1/4 inches. Getty Center, Los Angeles. The Echoes in Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem discuss beauty. Public Domain
Walker Larson
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Consider a flower. Is there anything in nature so delicate, so exquisitely fine, so beautiful? They shine like jewels amidst a bank of swaying grass. Flowers burst from the soil, breathing out fragrance and color with reckless abundance, an inexhaustible expression of the deep wells of life that lie hidden, brewing in the earth.

Wildflowers erupt in the fields of mountainous West Virginia. (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Forestwander_Nature_Photography_upload_bot">ForestWander</a>/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/deed.en">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>)
Wildflowers erupt in the fields of mountainous West Virginia. ForestWander/CC BY-SA 3.0
Walker Larson
Walker Larson
Author
Prior to becoming a freelance journalist and culture writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master's in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, "Hologram" and "Song of Spheres."