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: 

Sorrows springs are the same. 

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed, 

What heart heard of, ghost guessed****: 

It was the blight man was born for.

It is Margaret you mourn for. ---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880 

"Leafmeal"; akin to "piecemeal", a work coined by Hopkins **although Margaret might someday see a whole LOT ('worlds') of leaves laying around decaying, ***when she someday does, she will know why it moves her: the decay of leaves triggers thoughts of her own mortality ****before she had expressed it or heard it expressed, Margaret's own inner spirit knew the truth of this