I'm in a Hopkins mood today, so even though I shared this poem just a few months back, this is the perfect time of year to revisit it. It's also one of my favorite Hopkins poems and one of my favorite poems altogether. So, please pardon my redundancy and enjoy this exquisite piece of work:
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 & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & 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.
The Poetry Friday round-up can be found here today at Two Writing Teachers.
7 comments:
I, too, am a Hopkins fan, and each new poem of his discovered brings with it a lovely tongue-twisted cadence that I just have to read aloud. Thanks!
I like Hopkins, although I was recently dismayed to find that he was a bit of a misogynist and thought that creativity was the sole province of men. But I digress.
I love this poem. LOVE it. And today, as the changing leaves hush and shush in the breeze, it is the perfect poem to read.
THIS is a read aloud.
Read.
A.
Loud.
What a beautiful piece of writing. I don't know much of Hopkins work, but am always impressed when I encounter him. Thanks!
Every time I read this poem I can hear my old English prof. from college reading it to us in the hush of an autumn afternoon, when we were drowsy and only half paying attention... I was shocked, I remember, when he said it was about death. Who can speak of death when we were eighteen and longing to lie in the last heat of summer?
Hopkins never disappoints...I think his rhythms are beyond compare.
Thanks for choosing Hopkins. He's a favorite of mine, too!
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