Spring and Fall, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
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:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
I a-d-o-r-e Hopkins. The sprung rhythm, the richly textured language, the smell … the wild thirst of it…
Oh, the sumptuous Hopkins—this is the first of his poems I fell in love with, so it always has a special place in my heart.
Yep he is definitely one of my dead-poet boyfriends. 🙂