Gerard Manley Hopkins

I was immediately drawn to Gerard Manley Hopkins poem “Spring and Fall” though I had to read it several times to feel I understood what Hopkins was trying to express. I usually do have some struggle finding the meanings behind poetry (and most of the time I am probably way off in my assumptions!) but for some reason I struggled more with Hopkins then some of the earlier authors who were deemed to be more difficult. I am not sure why but this particular poem really intrigued me and I think having to work so hard to gain some kind of understanding made the poem that much more enjoyable for me!
In this poem Hopkins is addressing a young child named Margaret. She is “grieving” over something and the speaker is trying to figure out why she is so sad. Never does he try to comfort her though, which I found interesting. What I understood is that Margaret was mourning the end of the spring, which could also be metaphor for the end of her youth. Hopkins suggests she regards nature and “leaves” in the same way she thinks of “things of man” or people. This was interesting because many of the Victorians left connections with nature out of their writings and so reading that one line was like a flashback to earlier romantics. Hopkins is using this poem to express the origins of sadness. The one bit of advice he does offer Margaret (which he may have intended to be comforting, though I find depressing) is that as she grows up she will become numb to this feeling of loss.

“Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder”

This signals to me that whatever Margaret is experiencing is something which the speaker has also gone through. I am assuming that the emotion Hopkins tries to convey through Margaret is the loss of innocence, as this was a widely explored topic during the time. As you grow older, you become more understanding of losing morals and with maturity comes a lack of innocence. This reminds me of how William Blake separated his work into Innocence and Experience. As you become more experienced you become numb, or “colder”, and you realize things are not as simple or naive as they once seemed. Hopkins proves this to me, and the idea that all grief come from within the self through the last line of the poem. “It is Margaret you mourn for.” This lets me believe that what Hopkins is trying to say is that we all create our own sadness. Instead of comforting Margaret, Hopkins has the attitude that this is just a facet of life. Everybody experiences times of mourning and must learn to cope. This idea is not unique to Hopkins but has been evident through the writer of Keats and Tennyson as well as many others.
What I enjoyed about reading this poem was being able to relate it back to so many authors we have studied leading up to the Modern Period. I enjoyed being able to relate themes and similarities to previous eras and authors. It proved to me just how influential the earlier writers were to the course of literature!