Spring and Fall
A child called Márgarét is found grieving over Goldengrove unleaving, and the adult voice beside her tells her that as the heart grows older it will come to such sights colder and by and by care less. The subtitle addresses it to a young child, and the accents printed over the syllables are the poet's own instructions for how the line is to be said aloud. Written in eight days at Lydiate in 1880 while Hopkins was serving as a parish priest in Liverpool, and the shortest of his poems to be widely anthologised.
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Closest analogues
- 67% · 13 shared
- 67% · 13 shared
- 67% · 13 shared
- 64% · 10 shared
- 62% · 11 shared
- 61% · 11 shared