Spring and Fall
by Gerard Manley HopkinsTo 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.
My painting did remind me of Hopkin’s “Goldengrove unleaving,” but my chosen Spring is not Margaret’s young life. Mine is the spring of eternal growth that thrives alongside the Fall of a fallen world. It sees Hopkin’s “blight man was born for ” and “colder sights” in the light of Christ redemptive life. Living in His joyful faith, hope and love, we mourn not for ourselves, but we grieve with His Spirit over the tragic unrelenting suffering of war, famine and sickness and death that blight this beautiful bent globe we now call our home—and we offer His hope, understanding, faith and love to all who suffer.
Will we, like Margaret, frozen forever in the words of the poem, continue to grieve for ourselves as we see our “golden grove unleaving”? Or will our grief be a step toward selflessness?
In grief, will we face the realities of our tragic world? When, “Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; . . . will [we] weep and know why.” ?
Will we ask God’s grace to help us get through all this world’s loss and pain and get through grieving over ourselves— over the loss of our right to our selves—and our personal losses? And then, with all the strength of thought and will and feeling we can command, will we put the “things of man” in their rightful place and surrender to God’s sovereignty?
