Gerard Manley Hopkins

While reading some of Hopkin’s poems, “Spring and Fall” really stood out to me. The poem starts out innocently speaking about a young girl Margaret who is sad because the leaves are falling. An older man, the speaker of the poem asks her, “Margaret, are you grieving / Over Golden grove unleaving?” (1-2). At first seeming innocent, this scene is actually a serious moment for one so young. She seems to be grieving and weeping over the death of the leaves. She understands now what the falling of the leaves mean and now grieves for them. Still, only because of her innocence, she is able to grieve for the leaves, as someone would a man. Anyone older and less innocent would not have grieved for something as simple as a leaf. He tells the young girl:

“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 life” (5-8).

Eventually, everything must die, including all the leaves. As she gets older, she will realize this fact and will not be so affected by the falling leaves. She will not “spare a sigh” by the sight even though all the leaves may lie on the ground eventually. The leaves in this poem can also be like people dying. It is a serious realization that children realize at one point in their lives. Eventually, everyone must die just as everyone in the past has died before. It is inevitable that the leaves will fall just as it is inevitable that eventually people will fall. This point becomes clear in the next lines when the speaker tells her that when she is older she will know why she weeps. Even though she is older, she will weep for the same thing, the only difference now is, she is too young and innocent to fully understand the reason she is weeping. “Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed / What heart heard of, ghost guessed.” Her heart knew why she was weeping, but her mind and mouth had not yet figured this out at her age. When she is older, she will know. The last two lines sum up the point of the poem and reveal why Margaret is really mourning. He tells, “It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for” (14-15). Everyone is born to die, and in seeing the leaves, she mourns because eventually she will die too. For being about such an innocent girl, this poem has a deep and powerful message. Having the realization that life is a cycle, and that to live, means that eventually you must die can be scary and sad. Hopkins’s comparison of life to the seasons of leaves is an appropriate comparison, especially in the eyes of a child. They grow in the spring when they are young, and then in autumn, they fall to the ground and lie amongst all the other leaves that have fallen before them.