{"id":416,"date":"2017-03-09T18:30:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/?p=416"},"modified":"2017-03-09T18:30:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:30:02","slug":"spring-and-fall-by-gerard-manley-hopkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Spring and Fall&#8221; by Gerard Manley Hopkins"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre><em>to a young child<\/em>\r\n\r\nM\u00e1rgar\u00e9t, \u00e1re you gr\u00edeving \r\nOver Goldengrove unleaving? \r\nLe\u00e1ves like the things of man, you\r\nWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you? \r\nAh! \u00e1s the heart grows older \r\nIt will come to such sights colder \r\nBy and by, nor spare a sigh \r\nThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; \r\nAnd yet you w\u00edll weep and know why. \r\nNow no matter, child, the name: \r\nS\u00f3rrow\u2019s spr\u00edngs \u00e1re the same. \r\nNor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed \r\nWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed: \r\nIt \u00eds the blight man was born for, \r\nIt is Margaret you mourn for.\r\n\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #999999;\">From<em> Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. <\/em>Published by Penguin Classics. Copyright \u00a9 1985.<\/span><\/pre>\n<div>I have always loved this classic poem, the way is sounds in your ears when read out loud&#8211;it&#8217;s so lovely to read and one of the first poems I could recite from memory. It is a melancholic poem, beginning with the speaker questioning a child&#8217;s ability to grieve the falling of leaves. How can she be upset? She is a child, so young and not yet experienced in the ways of sorrow and loss. We are then invited to grieve for her, for the inevitable loss of her innocence. We do not remain children forever, and when she enters into adulthood, she will experience much greater sorrows than the shedding of leaves in autumn. The title, &#8220;Spring and Fall,&#8221; further emphasizes life&#8217;s propelling forward from youthful blossoming to fading beauty and eventual death. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ignatianspirituality.com\/ignatian-voices\/18th-and-19th-century-ignatian-voices\/gerard-manley-hopkins-sj\">Hopkins, a Catholic convert and Jesuit priest<\/a>, calls this the blight we were born for. Sometimes a work of art moves us toward contemplation by its very pessimism.\u00a0 What thoughts does the melancholy in this poem stir in you?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<hr \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>to a young child M\u00e1rgar\u00e9t, \u00e1re you gr\u00edeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Le\u00e1ves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! \u00e1s 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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/?p=416\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Spring and Fall&#8221; by Gerard Manley Hopkins<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-for-contemplation","category-prayer","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}