“Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

      Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in 1844 in Essex, England.   His parents were supportive of the creative nature of Gerard and his siblings.   Not only was he a writer/poet, Hopkins also studied drawing and music and at one time hoped to become a painter.  He attended Oxford where he studied Latin and Greek.  Hopkins was very religious and did much soul searching.  He actually trained for the priesthood.   Many of his most famous sonnets are religious.  Hopkins died in 1889 in Dublin of typhoid fever. 

 

 

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 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.

 

            This rather melancholy poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins is addressing a young child (Margaret) and discusses her youthful innocence.    The title of the poem, Spring and Fall, seems to compare young and naive Margaret to the fresh and blooming spring season and the older, more experienced speaker to the fall season with its decaying leaves and winding down to the end of the year.  

 

In the beginning, the poem asks, “Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?”   The little girl seems to be sad about the trees losing their leaves as winter approaches.    The falling leaves seem to represent decay/death.   However, Margaret does not seem to have the ability at her age to understand the reason why the aspect of falling leaves upsets her.  With the untainted views of a child, the young girl sees things from a different perspective than the more seasoned speaker.   The speaker comments on their differing outlooks and that age will change her response to things, “Ah! As the heart grows older/It will come to such sights colder…”   The speaker implies that Margaret will become hardened and become unsympathetic to some things with age – “by and by, nor spare a sigh/Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie..”   While the mature Margaret may not react the same to such things as “Goldengrove unleaving”, the older Margaret will be able to recognize her feelings better and will respond with sorrow to other things outside the world of Goldengrove.   In the last line of the poem, “It is Margaret you mourn for”, the speaker seems to imply that Margaret is actually grieving over her own mortality, although she would not be aware of this at such a young age.

 

There is a lyrical rhythm present.   The words have a sing-song effect that is quite mesmerizing.  Not all of the lines in the poem have the same number of syllables.   Hopkins uses a “sprung rhythm meter” and stresses words in rather unusual ways.  Alliteration is used in this poem, such as “sorrow’s springs”, “ghost guessed”, and “will weep.”  The  narrator’s tone, while tender towards the child, is not particularly comforting.   The speaker is quite philosophical.   The seasons of spring and fall seem to be a metaphor for the life cycle.  The rhyming sequence in this poem is AABBCCDDDEEFFGG with line 1 rhyming with line 2, line 3 with line 4, and so on.  There are two rhyming lines together throughout the poem except for lines 7 through 9 where three lines in a row rhyme.  Also, in line 7, the beginning of the line (“By and by”) rhymes with the end of the line (“lie”).