NATALIE MERCHANT - SPRING AND FALL: TO A YOUNG CHILD - Written for Gerald Manley
Hopkins 1880 poem
Margaret, are you grieving
Over golden grove unleaving? By and by
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, by and by
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrows' springs are all the same. They're all 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 that you mourn for.