Spring and Fall

01/14/2024

This fall, my department at school had a lovely "staff meeting" during which we went outside, made a campfire, and took turns reading some of our favorite poems. The wood was wet and smoky, so by the time we went back inside we all reeked of campfire. My jacket smelled for weeks--a not entirely unwelcome outcome. 

The poem I brought to the campfire was "Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's one I first read and loved years ago, and that has been on my mind since I dug it up again for the "meeting."

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás 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 wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

After I read the poem, one of my colleagues said, "I like it. I don't know what it means, but I like it." And yeah, is a difficult one to decipher through a cloud of smoke during a long staff development day. Here are a few of the reasons I chose to share it:

The first thing I love about this poem, even without getting to meaning, is its sounds. Listen to this: "Margaret, are you grieving / over Goldengrove unleaving?" and "You, / with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?" and "What heart heard of, ghost guessed" and "... the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for." Those rhymes and that alliteration-- the sounds are so closely paired that it's like an echo. It draws you along, kind of light and childlike but also inevitable and unstoppable. I love that. 

I also love what the poem is saying: little child, you are so innocent that you don't realize the grief you feel over the falling leaves is, in fact, your first encounter with the truth of your own mortality. I mean... ok, I guess I don't love that message inherently, because it's real depressing, but I love the revelation of it. This convoluted, almost flowery rumination ends with such a powerful, definitive proclamation: "It is Margaret you mourn for." Dang, that's good. 

Thank you, Gerard Manley Hopkins, for this one cool thing. 

Ellen Parent - Writer & Teacher
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