spring and fall to a young child

'Sring and Fall' : To a Young Child - Gerald Manley Hopkins

About Gerald Manley Hopkins

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) born at Stratford, Essex was educated at Highgate school and Balliol College, Oxford. He entered the Jesuit Order and worked as priest and administrator in various towns Jes including London and Glasgow. His poems remained unpublished during his lifetime. It was after his death by typhoid in 1889 that Robert Bridges published a few of his poems in anthologies and finally published his collected poems is 1918. Initially criticised as being odd and obscure, Hopkins won acclaim and recognition as a poet of great originality only posthumously

Hopkins was concerned with what he called 'the unique', 'the original spare, strange' in persons and emotions and nature. This individualising element which he called 'instress' caused in him what he called 'instress'. This response was bound to be unique and when it came through his poetry, it gave, in Hopkins' own words, a 'naked shock', a sense of confronting a rawness, of looking into the very core of the experience. "Spring and Fall' is a deceptively simple poem but it conveys a profound idea. Margaret, the young child is weeping over the fall of the leaves. This is her first realisation of the transitoriness with which all human existence is wrought. The poet feels that as Margaret grows up she will not have the same intense feelings for the falling of mere leaves but she will weep for her own condition. Human existence is accursed by the primeval sin, the Fall of Man, and all sorrow comes from this very realisation. Falling leaves is a metaphor for the shortlivedness of human existence. 'Spring and Fall' is an example of a tremendous tension resulting from the clash between faith in Catholicism and the awareness of the beauty of the world. Hopkins is a truly Victorian poet in expressing this tussle between faith and reason.

'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 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.

Glossary

Title. Fall autumn as used in the American language.

Line 8. wanwood  colourless forest

Line 8. leafmeal  scattered with, littered with leaves a word coined on the lines of piecemeal

Line 13. ghost  spirit (as in 'Holy Ghost')

Line 14. blight  cursed end; decay

Explanatory Notes.

Lines 1-9. The child, Margaret, is dismayed at the autumnal fall of leaves in the woods. The poet, with the experience of life behind what he says, consoles her by saying that decay is the rule of all human things. There is a cool acceptance of the inevitable transience in the human world. Mark the conversational mode of the poem and how the speaker is endowed with a sense of superior intelligence, maturity and certitude. The question mark at the end of line four is significant. Hopkins' originality lies in his coining of new words like 'wanwood' which is suggestive of the autumnal wood from which all the summer colours have gone. Another example of new coinage is 'leaves lie leafmeal' on the ground, like 'piecemeal".

Lines 10-15. The child will need to know and experience sorrows and joys with equanimity. Margaret who is crying over the fall of leaves is metaphorically crying over the shortlivedness of all human possessions. The way the speaker views the experiences of spring and fall and the way Margaret views them are bound to be different on account of the 'inscape' each one contains. The speaker's calm acceptance of the transitoriness of all human things and Margaret's weeping and violent protest against it are the result of the 'instress' of each and give rise to the unique ways in which people experience and respond to things.

Conclusion

In this poem Hopkins has used the changing seasons as a metaphor for the integral change we all face.

So hope you all loved this poem by GM Hopkins, which you can read in Graduation.