GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

[1844–1889]

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Born in London, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was the eldest of eight children. His father was a ship insurer who also wrote a book of poetry. Hopkins studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and, after converting to Catholicism, taught in a school in Birmingham. In 1868 he became a Jesuit and burned all of his early poetry, considering it “secular” and worthless. He worked as a priest and teacher in working-class London, Glasgow, and Merseyside, and later as a professor of classics at University College, Dublin. Hopkins went on to write many poems on spiritual themes but published little during his lifetime. His poems, which convey a spiritual sensuality, celebrating the wonder of nature both in their language and in their rhythms, which Hopkins called “sprung rhythm,” were not widely known until they were published by his friend Robert Bridges in 1918.

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of mán, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the héart grows ólder

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:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the sáme.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:

It ís the blíght man was bórn for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.