Today’s Viral Dailies comes to us by way of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Still one of my all time favourite poets. He was a Jesuit priest who never totally felt comfortable as a poet.

His earthly work with the pen ensured a better, richer ministry as priest.

As a Jesuit minister of the Gospel, his poems are infused with the breath of heaven.

There is a sadness afoot in the following poem. It seems written from one whose heart longs once again for the passionate, innocent throes of youth but has been forcibly awakened to the fears and disturbance of maturity and “the real world.” What in youth enthralls will soon disappoint.

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Spring and Fall

To a young child

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 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.