Gerard Manley Hopkins at Your Thanksgiving Table

His poem perfectly captures this sad, happy, dreary, delicious time of year. WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE

In 1880, Hopkins wrote “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child.” It was one of the first poems I ever memorized. It captures this autumn in all of its glory, and gloom.

Hopkins wrote:

Margaret, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Wait. Are those letters on the leaves? Why, yes!

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;