NPM: Goldengrove
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 heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Labels: poetry
1 Comments:
Goodness, but Fr Hopkins could write, couldn't he? But he died too young to realise that a time in life arrives when you don't come to such sights colder, since they may be your last, and you may never see the re-leafing. Still, of course, it is me I mourn for.
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