Welcome back to the daily poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was, of course, an English poet and a Jesuit priest

who lived from 1844 to 1889.

He was, you perhaps know by now, not particularly famous or financially successful during his life,

but his influence posthumously made him one of the most beloved and renowned and probably

important poets to write in English in the last,

say, 200 or so years.

In fact, he was a huge influence on people like T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, the Ridge Auden,

Cecil de Lewis, many others.

The poem that I'm going to read today is a poem brought to you by

another one of our editors at Forma. As I mentioned in the last couple weeks, we asked our editors to

share a poem from the fall for a feature for our subscribers. And this comes from one of our associate

editors named Emily Andrews. You might know Emily in her role for the Center for Lit, where she works with her family.

She is a great editor, and I wanted to share some of her thoughts on this particular poem.

And this poem by Hopkins is called Spring and Fall to a Young Child.

It goes like this.

Margaret, are you grieving over Golden Grove, 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 one would leaf me a lie. And yet you will weep, and know why. Now no matter, child,

the name, sorrows, 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.

...