Poem: “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. to a young child

 Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove leaving?

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 woods 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 for the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.