Gerard Manley Hopkins "Spring and Fall to a Young Child"

Seems simple...deceptively difficult.



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 heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for. -- Gerard Manley Hopkins

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• poetry
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• manley
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• spring
• and
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• young
• child
• difficult
• meter
• meaning

[mochila22]

I want to recite this poem at a contest next week, even thought its too hard for me. Any tips? =)

[Poetivity]

Read the interpretations of the poem and make it sound conversational. and don't mess up like I did. Older/Colder.

[ReliableInsider]

I never liked Hopkins. I think it was my professor. I can't get him out of my mind!

I think he was as tormented as Hopkins.

There is nothing more destructive than homophobia. At least it seems that way.

It seems pervasive, even today!

[Poetivity]

Where'd you go?

[Largo64]

Could you post the text in the description box? I like your reading, but now want to read along. Thanks!

[Poetivity]

Text is now posted...thanks for watching!

[MrSalman09]

The poem opens with the question to a young child, Margaret. The poet ask why she was sorry. At the lass of leaves of the Goldengrove trees as winter comes. The speaker says that the age will change these innocent thoughts. And the whole world of forest will be leafless and broken. The child will weep then, too. The poet fells that Margaret is expressing her sorrow over her own mortality at the sight of leaves falling off from the trees.

[abearson]

slammit.org is organizing performance onthe web for all of us!

[15scottie]

Go to the movie "Vision Quest" and in it the teacher reads it the way it should be. It's on here somewhere.

[kazalack]

Yeah, Hopkins used sprung rhythm a meter which he created.

[montims]

But Hopkins deliberately put accents on the syllables he wanted stressed, which unbalances the reading. This was read just like an ordinary poem. Please find it written with the original stresses.

[charlottepoet]

well done! hopkins is REALLY hard to read :)

[JeanEntwisle]

Very well read, got that syntax down and that's amazing. GMH was way out there, and you captured it so well with intelligence and compassion. More! more!