Tuesday's poem - 9/8/09

It has been a sad week. I have been thinking of death, and specifically, about the passing of a great woman I've known my entire life. My thoughts have been with the Layne family, our dear family friends of many decades, after the death of Nedra, their one-of-a-kind matriarch. She was my violin teacher, my Sunday School teacher, the mother of my friends, even our neighbor. She will be missed very deeply. She will be remembered too ... at gatherings, at Thanksgiving feasts, at church, at recitals. I am grateful I knew her.

Today's poem speaks of death in a poignant, beautiful way, and teaches a truth, that sorrow's springs are indeed the same. In the end, we all must die. It is the painful coda for each one of us. Hopkins, a soulful priest known for his poem "Pied Beauty", uses alliteration skillfully in this verse without distracting from the message of the poem.

Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.


At first I just posted the poem. Then I thought that maybe I should add some of my explication. Of course, I don't want this to feel like a class ...

When I teach the poem, we read it through and I ask students what they think it means. Usually the meaning is not initially apparent to them. I walk them through the first lines, that the little girl is crying about the falling of the leaves. The speaker is surprised that she cares at all, being so young. He comments that it only gets worse as one ages ... or at least more intense. She will see many more fallen leaves in her life, but when she's older, the loss of them - and her reaction to the falling - will make more sense: "And yet you will weep and know why." At the end of the poem, it's clear that when she cries for the leaves, she's crying about the cycle of life and death evident in the woods, and that she's really crying about her own eventual death. It is herself - Margaret - that she "mourns for."

The title - "Spring and Fall" - points to that cycle. In fact, I think the title is deeply important to understanding the poem. It's not just about death but about the accompanying cycle. (Think "Circle of Life" from The Lion King.)

I know this selection is a bit of a downer, but I think the poem is profound and meaningful. All loss points to death; all deaths point to our own.