Spring and Fall 
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás 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 wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

This poem has echoed in the recesses of my soul since 1978, so I resurrect it this autumn as I do every year. In October forty-five years ago while on retreat, Hopkins’ masterpiece brought me face to face with the truth that I had rejected the child I had been because I was ashamed of her. That was a valuable intellectual conversion. Three years later a spirit-inspired experience moved it out of my head into my whole being. I was led in meditation to enter my sacred space, lie down on the floor before the altar, and in a fetal position, wrap my arms around my body, gently rocking that little girl. Sobbing with years of pent up shame, I told her I loved her and would never leave her again. No more regret for “goldengrove unleaving.”

I don’t mourn for Margaret. I celebrate her courage and tenacity, she who made it out. And on the days when old age is not daunting, I am glad for the inevitable unleaving, the stripping down day by day that leads to authentic life.

My prayers are with you too in all of the unleaving that comes your way today.