Spring and Fall
As Professor Mazzie noted below, April is National Poetry Month. (How have you been celebrating?) I thought I would take the occasion to post one of my favorites, from a poet who is not that well known any more: Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins wrote poems in a peculiar style; among other things, the stress marks in the lines below are intended to indicate emphasis — I think the poem works better if you follow them.
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! 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.
