Seen as an innovator during his time due to his introduction of sprung rhythm, Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest who wrote about his unusual views on life. This is seen in Spring and Fall. The narrator attempts to explain to a young girl the reality of mortality. He uses images of changing and dying leaves and compares them to how people all eventually change and die as well. When trying to make a young girl feel better, telling her that everyone dies and she should accept that is not the best route to take. However, his message about the leaves is a good one, childhood does not last forever. Just like how the leaves die every year in nature, people die every year; it is a part of life that no one gets used to. A rather depressing topic, but it is an important one none the less.

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.

Comment on this page