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Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Spring & Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like 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 & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | 1918
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