Lyric Poem · Grief
Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
by Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1880
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 & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & 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.
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“Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins — quilloak.com/poems/spring-and-fall
Quick facts
- Poem
- Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
- Poet
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Published
- 1880
- Length
- 15 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Grief, Life, Autumn
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 15 lines · one 15-line stanza
- Line length
- Lines run 6-8 syllables (median 7). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Gerard Manley Hopkins1844–1889
- Source record
- PoetryDBSpring and Fall: To a Young Child by gerard-manley-hopkins, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1880
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 5923c806481747c5…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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