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.
Spring & Fall: [Margaret, Are You Grieving] by Gerard Manley Hopkins • 81 poems by Gerard Manley HopkinsEdit
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Virtually unknown in his lifetime, we have his poetry today only because it was collected and published by his friends after his death, painted with the obsessive ornateness and sentimentality of the Victorians, but also a startling musicality which was said to be ahead of its time.
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By Gerard Manley Hopkins, © 1869, All rights reserved.
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has anyone seen Kenneth Lonergan's film 'Margaret'. The film uses this poem as a leitmotif.
peace
alan
Margaret.... by Hopkins
From guest Giovanni Acuto (contact)
One or the most beautiful poems in the language.Gerard Manley Hopkins
From guest Rachael (contact)
god! i love this man, he is genius with his poems, im a huge fan, and im so glad i found this site! i also like it
this is my favorite poem of all time,when i hear it/read it, i think of how everyone's childhood is like this, we ask why!? why do things die? why do they fall? ect ect. butm most adults say*dont cry, its only the seasons, they shall be back in the fall* but gerard didnt give sympathy to margaret he gave her the bare facts, im only 14 but this is my FAVORITE poet and FAVORITE poem, i found him about 6 months ago on school assignment. but he is much more then a grade to me! and hopefully he is to more people 
we all must mourn for our lost childhoods.- From guest Deborah Binversie (contact)
but surely it is marguerite - your youth - you mourn for Song
From guest Jason (contact)
Natalie Merchant put this poem to song in her most recent record. For me, the already powerful emotional impact of the poem is deepened. I'm not usually a sap, but hearing this song does a number on me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8hMK_Hre5E&feature=relatedFor guest Russell Frimes
Personally, I have never laid claim to being amongst the cognoscenti (sic) and am happy to be "a mere dabbler" so I leave the embarassment where it really belongs.
The stresses or lack of them in any word is in the pronounciation given it by the reader unless it has been clearly indicated by the poet. No such stress is apparent in the printed versions I have seen though I confess I have never seen Hopkins' manuscript; have you?
We are therefore left with the stresses that would commonly be used in Hopkins' region of England which would be Márgarét. Margarét would be as unusual there as in most areas of England and would IMHO be a transmogrification that could not be justified.
Jim the dabblerTransmogrification
From guest Russell Grimes (contact)
I'm sorry, isn't the third syllable of Margaret at the poem's beginning supposed to be stressed? :-) You purported cognoscentes of poetry are but mere dabblers and an embarrassment to poetr yand humankind.Spring & Fall
From guest margaret (contact)
I found this poem filled with wonder the first time I read it. Because my name is Margaret,I claimed it as mine and I've recited it every fall as I watched each new year's goldengrove unleaving and walked along autumn paths of wanwood leafmeal. Silly as it was, I'd try to save just a few leaves to thank them for their beauty and see if I could just keep them for a few more hours. But now, at 65 and with terminal cancer, I have indeed come to such sights colder...realities only guessed at before. And yet I do still spare a sigh or shed a tear for the beauty lost to us each autunm. Death is indeed the blight both men and trees are born for, but sharing that reality and the love that informs us both thruogh it, can only help to make us stronger.Fr. Hopkins
From guest DBWheeler (contact)
Hopkins is a true Catholic voice that speaks to every generation. He speaks to our spiritual nature, without pretension unlike so many of the false, slick poetry of the 19th cent. As a Catholic convert, I look back at my early love of Hopkins (long before I became a Catholic) and now I know it was that Catholic voice I was responding too ,as well as his genius.Margaret, are you grieving
From guest Sylvia (contact)
I am posting this in the middle of the night, having just read a friend's story of the American poet, Paul Dunbar. It made me feel so sad, and the words of Hopkins poem came to mind. I looked them up here as an easy way of sending them to her. Grief is very hard to cope with, "And yet you will weep and know why..."
- From guest gretchen (contact)
I love this poem. It is one of my favorites, mostly because I love the name margaret. This poem is beautiful and haunting. Spring & Fall: (Margarent, Are You Grieving)
From guest Victor Bloom (contact)
I don't like it! There is too much in it that is obscure, such as Goldengrove, unleaving, wanwood, leafmeal, ghost guessed. It is Margaret I mourn for? I don't know any Margaret.Eye of the beholder.
The poet envies Margaret her "fresh thoughts," and expresses sadness for his own jaundiced lack of response to a world he remembers affecting him when he was a child.Grieving sickness and death
From guest Deborah (contact)
I have a friend in the hospital who had a stroke, and she had recently experienced the loss of her husband and mother. I woke up this morning with ten of the lines in this poem reciting themselves in my mind. I had not heard it since I studied it in a poetry class after junior year in H.S. It is a powerful poem to come unbidden and a propos after so many years.- From guest Jean (contact)
Certainly one of the greatest poems in the English language. - From guest Steve (contact)
I agree with Mary Fitzgerald, it's a moving poem. I loved it in my mid-twenties. In my mid-thirties, it's message of passing time has a keener resonance. Shakespeare's 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...' shares a similar sentiment. Aging is inevitable, but few poets/writers capture it as well as Hopkins or Shakespeare. - From guest Mary Fitzgerald (contact)
This poem, along with Robert Frost's two poems: "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Reluctance" weave a thread into my mind each end-of-fall. (I live in New England but grew up in LA.) All three poems express the inevitability of our mortality and the passing of time, something we cannot stop. Hopkins's poem is all the more moving to me as it is addressed to a young girl who has yet to experience the passage of time and the pain that is experienced by our aging. As the comment says below "age will alter her innocence." How true this is. What Margaret is really mourning is her own fleeting mortality, although she is too young to know this. Love this painful yet powerful poem. - From guest Gayle (contact)
Troubling to the tongue, not easily recited, but wonderful. Margaret's Grieving
From guest Tess (contact)
This is so beautiful, it's painful. I heard it referenced and looked it up (so love the internet!) and it's stayed with me for two days. Such a basic concept, fear of and grief over mortality, expressed in a way that speaks to the heart.Margaret's Grieving
From guest Robert E. Auclair (contact)
Thank you for posting this beautiful poem! I taught it in a freshman English class some 40 years ago. Little Margaret's grieving over leaves falling will (with maturity) turn to her mourning over death in mankind and perhaps become a little cold out of indifference. Truly, it is her own mortality for which she is grieving. However, she need not grieve if she will get acquainted with the Creator of Goldengrove and Who is the "resurrection snd the life!" Jesus said, "I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 11:25) May we all turn to Him and find the joy of life eternal!Margaret, are you grieving
From guest Gloria Heaven (contact)
When I taught English in junior high school, my seventh grade classes really caught on to this poem. It is a timeless poem that moves me every time.- How can you sum up a poem like this in 3 lines.. You can't..
It's about a man talking to(or around) a little girl who is crying because the leaves are falling from the trees as late autumn is present. She cares abouthte leaves as much as "the things of man" (mankind). He tells her that age will alter her innocence. A lot of leaves will fall and you won't feel sad, because as you grow older you will see that the world is full of death. Even though she can't articulate what she is feeling now. She is actually morning her own mortality. - This is greatm I love the rhyme in this. This is great I love it. The story is great about the passing of time. This is a classic.
