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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  Spring and Fall

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

Spring and Fall

 
To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Golden grove 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 world of wanhood leafmeal lie; 1
And yet you will 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
 
Note 1. Line 8.—An earlier and plainer reading is, “Though forests low and leafmeal lie.” [back]