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Gerard Manley Hopkins

‘The child is father to the man.’ 
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.’
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.’
‘The child is father to the man!’
How can he be? The words are wild.

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | 1918

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