I told someone this month about this poem-that it was by Theodore Roethke. So wrong! Here it is, by Gerard Manley Hopkins:


Spring and Fall, to 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.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins


By the way, when I first studied this poem in high school, I'm nearly certain that the 'e' in 'Margaret' in the first line only had an accent mark. We discussed how that little mark heightened the distinction between the child in the first line, the adult in the last.

In my brief Google research tonight, I find no sign of any accent.