Though Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal Lie . . .

Autumn Litter -- Flickr

Today, I'm thinking of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called Spring & Fall.  One of my sisters and I used to run together many years ago, along a wooded path that hugged the edge of a river.  As we ran, we would sometimes memorize poems that we carried on small scraps of paper.  This is one of those poems.  How fitting that we were hardly more than children ourselves back then.  

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.

On the literal level, this is a poem about a young girl feeling sad about the trees losing their leaves.  Hopkins is  ruminating over the inevitability that the passage of years will bring Margaret such sorrows that--"though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie"--she, when she's older, won't even "spare a sigh."  In other words, even though all the leaves lie around her in a pale, mashed up mass on the ground, life will have shown her much greater sorrow, and the sight that once brought her to tears won't even phase her.  

I just love the way that 8th line feels in my mouth:  "Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie."  

How sad, but true, that we become desensitized as our hearts "grow older" and "colder."  And, of course, just as the trees lose their leaves, we people lose our leaves too.  We age.  But more to the point, we lose our innocence.  And sometimes, we lose our belief.  Like Eve and Adam, we eat the fruit life offers, and see the world through colder, sometimes jaded eyes.  Perhaps this "blight,"* as Hopkins calls it, is inevitable. 

But I like to think not.  After all, while the trees lose their leaves, they do regain them.  The poem is entitled "Spring & Fall," not "Eternal Fall," or something to that effect.  I certainly have days that feel like "wanwood leafmeal lie" -- or worse.  But I also have "GoldenGrove" days.  (And I'm not bipolar, I assure you.)  Don't you?           

Today, I'm also thinking about a work acquaintance, who left me feeling like "wanwood leafmeal," and grieving, after listening to him describe his own personal fall and "unleaving."  Despite nearly half a century of life as a "believer," he found that he can no longer believe in what he once held as true.  GoldenGrove has lost its leaves.  I'm sure he must think me much like Margaret, whose heart has yet to grow older and come to such sights colder.  But I like to think that I can still see GoldenGrove, even in moments when the leaves may feel like they're falling.  Isn't that the beauty of seeing the world with a child's eyes?  Children do see more clearly than "grown"ups -- after all.      

*I can't resist adding that blight is a fascinating word.  It is defined to mean "any of numerous plant diseases resulting in sudden conspicuous wilting and dying of affected parts, especially young, growing tissues."  On a more general level, it is "something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity."