Judith Warner put this poem at the beginning of her latest post in the New York Times this week. I love this poet (Gerard Manley Hopkins) and remember well my poetry professor going over another of his poems in class that was so musical it almost sounded like a song when he first read it to us:” …like shining from shook foil…” was one of the lines in that poem. This poem is really resonating with me now that I feel so how evanescent the world is now. The ephemeral beauty of the poem gets me every time. If you read it outloud to yourself, it won’t even matter if you understand it exactly or not, you will feel melancholy. That is the power of his poetry.
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke 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
