Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older 5
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name: 10
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for. 15
Notes:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/59.html
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/
This concludes the POEM OF THE DAY series.–W.E. Poplaski
