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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are 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.
First published in 1918, the above poem can be found, for example, in:
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Catherine Phillips, ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition).
New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
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