Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

The title of the poem alludes to two seasons: the season of blossoming and blooming, and Autumn or Fall, the season of letting go and slowing down before winter. The allusion to two seasons may seem puzzling at first since the poem is explicitly set in the Fall. However, the inclusion of “Spring” makes sense when the reader considers that spring is a reference to the young child Margaret. Like the season, Margaret is in the early spring of her life, fresh and vivacious. The juxtaposition of spring and fall indicates that all springs are followed eventually by fall; thus, everything that blooms will also wither in the end. The title also alludes to the cyclical nature of time and life and the Biblical narrative of the Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve were cast out of the immortal Garden of Eden into the mortal world.

Though the poem is addressed to Margaret, it reflects more the speaker’s internal dialogue. The speaker’s calm, almost paternal manner contrasts with the grimness of their message: thus, it is likely they are not actually talking to Margaret, but using Margaret as an alter ego to process their own complex feelings. Indeed, even the cause of Margaret’s grief is unknown; it is the speaker who assumes Margaret is crying because of “Goldengrove unleaving” (Line 2). Despite the assumption, the speaker’s voice is never condescending or patronizing; it is filled with sorrow and a deep empathy for Margaret, who reminds the speaker of their own child-self. As the phrase “Goldengrove unleaving” shows, the poem is rich in Hopkins’s trademark neologisms, or fresh coinage of words and phrases. The newly minted compound word Goldengrove refers to a grove of trees with golden leaves, while “unleaving” to the shedding of leaves. The unusual word uses the noun “leaf” as a verb, while the prefix “un” denotes loss. Thus, “unleaving” means losing leaves. The words echo natural speech patterns, where one would say golden grove in a breath, as well as a child’s creative approach to language-building. “Unleaving” is also an interesting word because it introduces the idea of “leaving” in the poem. Leaving is associated with goodbyes, exits, and sometimes, sadness. It also means leaving something behind. The child too is leaving – leaving the grove, eventually leaving her childhood, and even leaving the speaker.

Another instance of Hopkins’s fresh approach to language appears in the next two lines, where the speaker says: “Leáves like the things of man, you / With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?” (Lines 3-4). The syntax is unconventional and twisting, and it takes the reader some time to grasp its meaning. The speaker is surprised that the child with her fresh thoughts is capable of mourning for “the things of man” or mortal or material things. Why does the speaker frame this query in their peculiar way? One answer of course is that Hopkins simply loved to experiment with language and wrote his poems to be extremely pleasing to the ear. The other is that the roundabout sentence mirrors the speaker’s disorientation at discovering an emotion like grief in so young a child, with her “fresh thoughts” (Line 4). The descriptor “fresh” associates Margaret with newness and spring. Yet, the poem’s inherent tension – between life and death, spring and fall, youth and age – casts a shadow over Margaret’s fresh thoughts in the next two lines.

In these lines, the speaker mourns that as Margaret’s heart “grows older” (Line 5), it will “come to such sights colder” (Line 6) or be unmoved by the sights of nature. Immediately, the warm tones of the previous lines – the “Goldengrove” (Line 2) and the “fresh thoughts” (Line 4) – are squelched and muted with the cold cynicism of adulthood. Margaret will no longer “sigh” (Line 8), even though the forests of the world “wanwood leafmeal lie” (Line 9). The shedding forest is now described as “wanwood,” rather than “goldengrove,” echoing the bleached-out worldview of adulthood. For young Margaret, the loss is stationed at the point when the trees are in the process of shedding their leaves. For the adult, the leaves have already been shed; the woods are wan and bereft yet they draw no emotional response from her. The reason they coax no response is that the adult is not as moved by the beauty of the golden leaves in the first place. Since they never noticed the beauty, they do not mourn the loss. “Leafmeal” – or rotten leaves trodden till they become a mush – evokes decay and neglect associated with ageing. The poem itself seems to be travelling through the spring of youth to the fall of age.

Next the speaker darkly hints that the adult Margaret will weep or mourn for other reasons, and the reasons will be known to her. These lines conjure up the burdens of the adult world. The grown-up does not notice the falling of leaves because they have other cares. As they advance in age, they will encounter loss of both beloved things and people. They will also mourn the loss of time, their former energy, and their health. Grown-up Margaret will have her share of grief, and in the future she we will know what she grieves. This brings the speaker back to contemplating the real cause of Margaret’s sorrow. The speaker is aware they are revealing a terrible truth to the child. To soften the blow, they address Margaret with a conciliatory, comforting “Now no matter, child” (Line 10). Margaret is addressed as “child” for the first time in the poem, which reflects the speaker’s empathy for Margaret at the moment of disturbing her childlike belief in her invincibility. Till this point, Margaret may have been blissfully unaware of mortality. She has also been in a state of absolute union with nature. However, the shedding of the leaves introduces her to the idea of impermanence. Margaret cannot bring the leaves back, as much as she loves them. But it is not just the loss of the leaves that triggers her tears, it is the inference she unconsciously draws from the loss that really upsets her. Margaret cannot understand this inference yet, let alone express it; it is something “heart heard of, ghost guessed” (Line 13). Margaret’s heart or intuition senses it, and her “ghost” or spirit knows it. The evocative phrase “ghost guessed” adds to the idea that the knowledge Margaret is unconsciously learning is the merest or most ghostly of suggestions. Additionally, the word “ghost” ties into Margaret’s feeling of inexplicable terror and sorrow. It also evokes mortality and death. The inference she unconsciously draws – the final reveal of the poem - is that if the leaves can be lost, so can Margaret. Margaret really mourns her own mortality.

The final lines of the poem reflect the poem’s religious themes. The blissfully unaware Margaret before the unleaving of Goldengrove is symbolic of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve before they tasted the fruit of knowledge. In that early state, they are described as innocent and pure as children. After they eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve not only gain knowledge that corrupts them and they are cast out of immortal Eden into the world of mortality. The speaker describes mortality as “the blight man was born for” (Line 14); the choice of the word “blight” is noteworthy, because a blight is a scourge or a plague. By using “blight” instead of another word, the speaker – and the poet – firmly places their sympathies with humans. The speaker does not suggest dying is the destiny of humans as decreed by God; rather, they empathize with humans that death is unfair and arbitrary, like a blight.