"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

   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 héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.


Source of the text - Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works.  Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Catherine Phillips.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

TJB: Sprung-high-lyric. With short lines & offbeat feminine rhyme [man you-can you!], the poem predicts answer to its 2 opening questions is No.