A poem for fall

Those of you who also follow me on Facebook know that I'm teaching in an interdisciplinary course this semester, which means that I'm reading such great works of literature as Gilgamesh and The Odyssey. Something about the questions of mortality in those texts and the seasonal shift to fall has had me thinking about the poem below. And since the poem is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who inspired the title of this blog, it seemed appropriate to share it here.

Spring and Fall:

to a Young Child

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 and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.